
file photo by Boyd Loving
Ridgewood Police are, by and large, very good. The question that was put to us was, why does NJ have more cops per capita than other states? Answer – unions. Unions exist to make sure that the least qualified are guaranteed work and paid as well as the most qualified. Additionally, the union pension system is hopelessly unsustainable and when it finally breaks things will be ugly for everyone – those of us that pay for it and union members that collect it. The sooner we address this, the less bad it will be.
Time to end public pensions and have public employees put there money in a 401k. Taxpayers no longer can afford this generosity.
Only 3 problems with your analysis.
1. Wages are negotiated between the Union and Government.
2. All Police Officers are not paid the same. Generally the more experience you have, the more you are paid..
3. Pension Plan is NOT a Union Pension System, it is a Government System.
I do agree the pension system is unsustainable. If you want an advance look at what the end looks like check out Illinois & California, or just sit back and watch, we have just about reached the point of no return.
Same as the teachers. Their fund needs payments to.
9:47 – Regardless of who negotiates wages or administers the pension, it is an unsustainable model. The reason you can’t put new hires into a 401K is because you need their pension contributions to pay current retirees. By definition that is a Ponzi scheme – all of which eventually fail. Spectacularly.
Unions believe the taxpayers are on the hook for this and won’t budge … will lead to big problems for NJ. Entire system needs an overhaul. I have to give Sweeney some credit for not supporting that amendment.
What is the difference between the NJ Pension systems and Social Security?
Nothing, the politicians used both as their private piggy bank raiding the funds, taking the money and leaving paper IOUs.
Then they spent the monies (Social Security and NJ Pension funds) on pet projects to get votes.
Career politicians are unstainable, not the pension systems.
Unsustainable. $10bn a year in pension checks versus only $70bn in pension assets. 41% of NJ public pension plan participants already retired versus only 51% of plan participants actually contributing and 8% not yet retired but no longer contributing, i.e. only 1.24 workers making pension contributions for every retiree…. that’s the definition of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. The math doesn’t work. Retirees are living 2-3 years longer than we currently assume in the NJ plans, yet draw pensions for more years than they contributed to the funds. It will only get worse as the boomers retire through ~2024. This isn’t going away pension thugs.
Ummm, 6;54 AM, nothing would be sustainable if you put your money in and someone else kept taking it out. What part of that DON”T you comprehend?
Again 9:07, this problem isn’t going away. You can spin all the union thug lies you want, but the money’s gone on white elephants and black holes like union boondoggle American Dream Meadowlands, Atlantic City giveaways, and NJ state roads which cost taxpayers 3X more than state roads in any other state. The money is gone propping up crappy union labor giveaways like the above. So are you going to keep whining when the pension assets are all gone in 10 years and you get nothing, or are you willing to do something today to save your pension and the pension of your legacy kids who got their jobs through nepotism? Your call. The taxpayers are done.
Good point 6:48… The reason you can’t put new hires into a 401K is because you need their pension contributions to pay current retirees. 400,000 workers currently pay for 322,500 public sector retirees in NJ, but here comes the wall of retiring boomers. Which means all the kids the Village just hired for the RPD won’t get any pensions because there’ll be less workers than retirees by the time they hit 25 years service and the pension funds will be depleted. They’d be better off in 401(k) plans today, but their unions refuse to tell them this even though the union bosses know the math doesn’t work. Which is why they’re squawking for more tax increases, lottery funds, gasoline taxes, you name it. Poor kids.
To Anonymous March 8, 2017 at 1:58 am
It’s obvious you want to blame the government workers for what the past Governors since Whitman are responsible for.
That’s like blaming the person who puts their money in the bank and making them pay when the bank gets robbed.
Read this and educate your self please.
https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/01/how_did_nj_get_into_this_pension_mess.html
Gov. Christie Shifted Pension Cash to Wall Street, Costing New Jersey Taxpayers $3.8 Billion
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In 2009, the year before Christie took office, New Jersey spent $125.1 million on financial management fees. In 2013, the state reported spending $398.7 million on such fees. In all, New Jersey’s pension system has spent $939.8 million on financial fees between fiscal year 2010 and 2013. That’s only a little less than the amount Christie cut from state education funding in 2010 — a cut that played a major role in shrinking the state’s teaching force by 4,500 teachers. That money might also have reduced the amount the state needs to pay into the pension system to keep it solvent.
.
https://www.ibtimes.com/gov-christie-shifted-pension-cash-wall-street-costing-new-jersey-taxpayers-38-billion-1667622
Funny thing (well not funny) is if they used passive investing by using indices and funds like spdrs they would have doubled since 2008 with literally no fees outside of safekeep and basic brokerage costs. Hedge funds have been doing crappy for years.