The states bankrupted their own pension systems by borrowing against them. That money was there, it was promised early on and it was funded by bonds. If the city starts to run out of money, borrowing from a pension is not the fault of the worker. It's the fault of the god damn fucking state. The money was there.
If you fell short because the market shrunk and you told your workers it was privately vested in mutual funds, that's fine and just pay out everyone less. But most cities and states backed them by bonds and then borrowed against pensions when they started running out of money thinking they could make it up later. What the actual fuck?! No. You're not going to be able to do that. You're an idiot mayor/governor for even thinking that. Leave money that isn't yours alone.
" That money was there, it was promised early on and it was funded by bonds."
This is not factually accurate, in the sense that nothing could have stopped this in a bunch of states. The rate of pension payout growth in a bunch of states is far above what they could ever pay back, no matter what the investment and how well funded. It was only a matter of time.
(and the union response in most cases was .... not great)
It's certainly not the case everywhere, but definitely the case in some places.
You are basically arguing that the problem with a ponzi scheme is that they did invest enough up front and leave it alone.
Weird how the pension system is the responsibility of the state to operate, but somehow when the state doesn't put enough money in it, it's the union's fault.
You act as if this is one sided.
States need to fund them for sure.
But you can't have a liability that grows faster than it can be funded.
When states push on larger contributions, unions need to not essentially blackmail states into bankruptcy. We'll stop working now if you don't kick the can down the road.
I have never seen a state that funded them properly
but i have never seen a union that acted like they understood (i'm sure they understand, they just look out for their members) that if you are paying out pensions at a unsustainably growing rate, everyone loses.
Same argument could be applied to corporations and pollution. They understand it's destroying the environment but they are looking out for their profits and everyone loses.
As many comments like this in this thread have shown, the arguments for and against unions can be applied wholesale for corporations. Why is it that everyone gets something stuck in their craw when it's labor that's pooling it's power and not capital? Hell if you were super laissez faire capitalism like some libertarians you shouldn't care at all as it's consenting adults joining a contract together
What makes you think i think the state of corporations running things is great? :)
I just don't think unions actually solve any problem in that realm, and any problem they could solve, i believe there are more effective, less risky, less problematic ways of doing.
Whether a pension is sustainable into the future is something you should factor in before committing to operate and provide pensions. It's obscene to make that commitment and then back out later and expect everyone to be OK with their retirement fund evaporating.
If you hadn't lied and set up the pension, they would have had advance notice that their retirement is entirely up to them. Instead, they get screwed out of their retirement and somehow the unions are the villains for fighting that.
"Whether a pension is sustainable into the future is something you should factor in before committing to operate and provide pensions."
Again, you act as if this is simply black and white.
Meanwhile, they work to vote out everyone who won't commit to doing so, do everything in their power to make it complete political/etc suicide to not make the pensions happen.
It's just as obscene to do this, and then not expect that, eventually, someone who says "well wait a sec this will bankrupt us", will have to undo it. That's on the people who did it, the union leadership, and the state.
It's not like the unions can't do math. They knew this would happen just as well, as did their membership, and they fought tooth and nail for it anyway in order to "get theirs" while they still could. This argument that "well they should and that's okay and it's everyone else's fault for letting them" is just silly. If that's how you see unions "helping people", good riddance to them. There are very very few innocents here. The innocents are the other taxpayers, honestly. And yes, they absolutely all are villains for the part they play in doing this.
Again, it's 100% not the one-sided thing you present where the poor unions negotiated a fair deal against the evil state and people got screwed later.
Do you want me to pull up the history of votes in these states, and how the union usually campaigned heavily for decades against any attempt to reduce or taper the pensions (IE not give them to new recruits) at all to try to make them more sustainable right up until the state had to kill them entirely to avoid bankruptcy? This is why people got "screwed out of their retirement" (in plenty of cases, they voted to approve the union doing this, so ....)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html