Pensions and Taxes Increase While Labor Unions go Unchallenged

If conservatives knew how to fight the information war, more economically struggling and over-taxed Americans would know facts like the following and something would be done about it. Instead, conservatives continue to pretend that out of date campaigns via direct mail and radio and TV ads can produce a well-informed public. No one is better at demonstrating insanity — doing the same thing and expecting a different result — than conservatives. And it’s not just in California, it’s everywhere.

Here is Joel Fox writing at Union Watch:

In January 2015, the Manhattan Institute’s Steve Malanga, writing in the Wall Street Journal about public pension costs gulping down tax raises, quoted me saying that no matter what local politicians tell voters, when you see tax increases, think pensions.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Here I go again!

Recent accounts indicated that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) unfunded pension liabilities have increased because CalPERS investment revenue has dropped. Yesterday on this site, David Kersten cited the dramatic increase of CalPERS unfunded liabilities rising from $93 billion two years ago to $150 billion today.

More to the point, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters wrote, “CalPERS has been demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in additional contributions from state and local governments – hitting cities particularly hard…”

With the obligation for more local taxes going to cover pension costs is it just a coincidence that so many tax increase measures are popping up on local ballots?

I don’t think so.

Sure, there will be specific reasons that local governments say they need more tax revenue. More for police or transportation or the homeless, they will say. The governments would have more revenue for those services if they did not have greater obligations for underfunded pensions.

Read more: Union Watch

Image credit: www.unionwatch.org.