[ubernostrum]

It's impossible to reform pensions without paying private-sector market rate to state and local employees.

"Unsustainable" pensions are a politician's way of punting the issue -- rather than hit the budget today by paying market rate, they promise far above market rate later on when some other sucker is in office. And everybody -- including the people whose taxes will end up paying for it -- falls for this over and over and over.

[gbacon]

Compensation is a vector. Government employees are much more difficult to terminate than their counterparts in the private sector. That is, government employees are compensated in part in strong job security.

[toomuchtodo]

That's a problem with at-will employment law though, not government jobs. Government job security should not be considered compensation.

[humanrebar]

> And everybody... falls for this over and over and over.

I don't know about everybody. Lots of people benefited from lower-than-possible taxes over the years, sold their houses for large piles of cash, then move to Arizona or Florida or something where taxes are lower, houses are cheap, and there's no snow.