California, America's Gaza Strip?

[Billo_Really]

California has, what other states only dream of.





Word to the OP, you need to be sending more money to us. You're not paying your full share. So buck it up! We're worth it!

 

[BluesLegend]

Darkfury California has a massive $300+ billion dollar shortfall in its public employee pensions and no way to pay for it, too big even for California. The $53 billion dollar GM bail out was eye popping, your talking $330 billion and growing.

California has been angling for the Federal government aka taxpayers in the other 49 states to bail them out. They hid half this shortfall for years with accounting funny business until a change in the law forced them to fess up. California is living on borrowed time imo.

We're not alone in this regard. There are plenty of states, counties, cities across the country dealing with exactly the same issue. I wonder what's going to happen when these entities go bankrupt en masse.

There will be Federal bail outs, with $18 trillion in debt the Federal government really doesn't care if they pile on another $6 trillion. California made a run at Obama to get him to bail out their pensions, he rebuffed it no doubt for political reasons at the time. But mark my words these Democrat states are going to come crawling to the Federal government at some point to bail out their public employee pensions and the Federal government will do it. Followed closely by the Republican states who will want their share. It will be a crisis and the sky will be falling and blah blah. I believe California was given some kind of assurance as such at the time because this issue nearly instantly vanished from the news and California went right back to spending as usual.

It's not like people are unaware of this issue. Anyone who even halfway pays attention to the economy knows this storm is coming. And yet those who set these schemes up and those who receive these pensions holler to high heaven at the mere suggestion of curtaling this nonsense--let alone reducing benefits paid out. Even when their pension is funded by a municipality that is about to go bankrupt--or has gone bankrupt--they still scream about how they deserve their pension and it's in the contract that's been signed, and blah, blah, blah. Nevermind the fact that the money needed to pay the pensions doesn't exist, or that critical civil services must be cut in order to keep making any payments at all.
Forget trash pickup, give me my check--I'll move out of state (or anywhere else other than the place going bankrupt).
Any of you greedy bastards out there collecting pensions from a defunct, or soon to be defunct, municipality that gave you all X-Mas for the rest of your life, be sure to enjoy retirement while everything else burns. Who ever said you can't get blood from a turnip?
The rest of us are subject to real-world consequences of failed economies.
I wonder if it's too late for me to get a civil service job with a fat pension and full medical benefits...

You nailed it!