file photo by Boyd Loving
By Samantha Marcus | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on March 21, 2017 at 6:18 PM, updated March 21, 2017 at 8:14 PM
TRENTON — The majority of New Jersey voters are willing to let the state’s wealthiest residents pick up the tab for government worker pensions but don’t want tax increases on lower-income residents, according to a new poll.
Seven in 10 Garden States voters polled by the Quinnipiac University Poll said they support raising taxes on people with annual income greater than $1 million, the so-called millionaire’s tax, to shore up the seriously underfunded public pension system.
Twenty-seven percent of those polled were opposed, and of the Republicans polled, 55 percent were opposed.
I always like those polls. Like 4 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Even if this somehow happened, the increse in tax revenue should go towards debt service. This State is functionally bankrupt. How can any extra money be spent on anything other than paying down debt?
We love paying bills with other people’s money.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
― Margaret Thatcher
The looting of the state’s finances is accelerating…. what’s the difference between Venezuela and NJ? Venezuela has oil. When you have more that three public sectors employees in the state for every one private sector employee, the public sector union bought politicians are going to find ways to pay for their votes. Driving out the last few remaining millionaires to put a small dent in paying for already unsustainable pension benefits is an idea?
How about paving the roads, fixing the potholes, and investing in our infrastructure before giving another cent to public worker pensions? They sent out $10 billion in pension checks last year, up from $8 billion just a few years back. The growth in pension liabilities is unsustainable because more people are retiring than are joining the workforce, and pensioners are living 2~3 years longer than we currently assume. Giving any money to the pension funds is throwing it down a black hole. Note the state is already diverting lottery funds to make a record high $2.5 billion payment this year to the pension funds. But this black hole is all consuming and needs more, more, more. Spend good money on roads and infrastructure that will help the economy. Give tax breaks for private sector employers who create jobs and spend on R&D in the state. Fund medical and technology research at our universities to support the pharma & tech employers we have in state. Spend money for tomorrow, not for yesterday.
So sad this is an actual post on a so called “free market, laissez-faire” blog…. the foxes run the hen-house
12:36 is Right.There must be some examples from other States that turned around a tax and spend unsupportable liabilities explosion.Interest rates and the cost of Money to operate is going up folks.Tnis will excellerate the need for other off balance sheet funding of an unsustainable obligation by the state governments.
Let it go broke.
NJ Governors beginning with Whitman stole the pension money to buy votes with many pet projects and now you low information voters are just beginning to realize you have been getting screwed and you want to get out of being screwed by screwing someone else (government employees) …..nice.
And here is what would happen. The rich would leave NJ, and the net result would be not only the pension fund being in the same jam, but the State’s tax base would be even weaker.
There are always unitended consequences and the Left are famous for never understanding this concept.
@6:10. Such a state exists. Wisconsin.
Step 1 to setting the state right was breaking the back of unions. Sure, the unions and their Democratic Party affiliates put up a bitter, relentless, horrendous fight. But thankfully there were a reasonable number of sane people in Wisconsin, who stood by Governor Walker in his fight, despite attacks coming even from White House.
I have no such hope for NJ. Even in a place like Ridgewood that would be most adversely affected, bleeding hearts are now the majority.
Wi only had Milwaukee and Madison to deal with. We have Camden. Trenton, Newark, Paterson, Jersey City etc etc etc to deal with.
NJ and it’s public pensioners are screwed because we can’t diminish pension benefits – just see the delusional post @ 7:58 on the Ridgewood Blog of all places… a Ridgewood resident is actually in favor of diverting funds from all other state and municipal future needs to pay for excessive, unsustainable past promises. No means no.
Delusional post @ 7:58 huh March 24, 2017 at 1:26 pm
Apparently you have not a clue about what your talking about or you are a pathological LIAR!. The Status Report of the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission issued on September 25, 2014 all but said NJ Governors beginning with Whitman stole the pension money to buy votes with many pet projects with the following statements…..
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Page 3) Both public employees and taxpayers as a whole, however, have been poorly served by a long-standing and bipartisan tradition of increasing benefit levels without adequate funding. Successive Governors and State Legislatures have committed the State to providing these benefits based on relatively optimistic financial assumptions without adequate consideration of the long-term costs to taxpayers if economic reality were to fall short of these assumptions.
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Page 6) the failure of the State to make required pension contributions when they have been due has made a bad situation much worse. Local governments participate in the same plans but have made more of their required payments with greater regularity, resulting in the local government share of the funds having a funded ratio of 75%, compared to the State’s 54% funded ratio.11 Under-funding the State’s share of the plans has been consistent under the stewardship of both major parties, as shown by the chart on the following page:
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Page 6) All that being said, however, the failure of the State to make required pension contributions when they have been due has made a bad situation much worse. Local governments participate in the same plans but have made more of their required payments with greater regularity, resulting in the local government share of the funds having a funded ratio of 75%, compared to the State’s 54% funded ratio.11 Under-funding the State’s share of the plans has been consistent under the stewardship of both major parties, as shown by the chart on the following page:
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Page 15) As the table below indicates, largely due to the extremely high investment returns of the late 1990s, at the turn of the century the funded ratio of the plans based on actuarial values approached or exceeded 100%, even during the 2000-02 economic downturn. However, the apparent resiliency of the plans during that downturn is misleading. The actuarial asset values are rolling multi-year averages. For some time after the flush years of high returns, those averages continued to reflect high actuarial asset values for those years even though the market value of the assets was declining. Statutory changes also increased the expected rate of return from 7% to 8.75% and modified the actuarial funding method to allocate more costs to future years, thereby reducing the apparent value of the liabilities. This further reinforced the misperception that the plans were safely and permanently in surplus.
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he reported asset values and statutory changes enabled the State, in full compliance with the standards then in place, to discontinue making contributions to the funds. While there were clear warnings then that this could lead to huge fiscal problems in the future, at the time it permitted hundreds of millions of dollars to be diverted to other purposes ranging from education to tax relief. Compounding the problem, during the years when the pension plans were apparently well-funded (but actually lapsing into deficits), the Legislature enacted a series of benefit enhancements, including a retroactive 9% increase in TPAF and PERS pensions in 2001, which increased State pension liabilities by $4.2 billion.35
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https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pdf/NJPHBSC.pdf
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The only thing delusional here is you Anonymous March 24, 2017 at 1:26 pm