State

A very bad idea. Even worse than the Detroit Lions.

Retiring as a government teacher at $100,000?

That's dancing in the dirty rain; we're going to sink.

BelichickFan

Needless to say, it's ridiculous and unaffordable. Something like 1% for every year worked in the public sector is the most anyone should be getting.

DarrylS

One of the side effects of the three strikes rule, is all the manpower needed and the subsequent benefits of building all those prisons.. unintended consequences, but in some states really break the bank see California..

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"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

BelichickFan

Prisons don't have to be built by the public sector. This is one of the many reasons many of us are always trying to REDUCE the size of the public sector.

Fogbuster

Is it just me or is there a race on to see how fast the American economy and culture can be totally hosed??? Am I the only one who's not dancing with Dorothy ... down the yellow brick road???

If America is 15 TRILLION in debt, so much that the Chinese are not willing to take any more IOUs, and even BarackO is saying: "Hey, we're broke," .... then where is the money supposed to come from to pay for all this new entitlement stuff????

Has the concept of "living within your means" been tossed under the bus entirely???

How long can this continue?? Even the printing presses that make all the dollar bills that are needed require paper, and they need ink, and they need people to run them. Where are all these things going to come from??? The sky? Kenya? Chicago? Mass.?

I smell a reality shiit-storm brewing on the close horizon.


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"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing."

DarrylS

The reality is that the private sector has done so with mixed results.. the private sector may do ok with the less secure and step down facilities, but the max facilities are the venue of the public.

Even private sector prisons have to pay their staff, and prisons are a very expensive proposition.

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

Patters

Leave it National Review not to say the 3 people cited in New York were Superintendents, who are not union employees.

Consider that James Hunderfund was a Superintendent, thus non union, and that most of those high pensions are from Long Island, which has actually tended to lean Republican.

Now the question is, how do those pensions compare with private sector pensions? I have no idea how much top executives of corporations make, but I suspect it's still a better deal to be successful in the private sector. One year's bonus from working on a hedge fund in a good year could probably fund the life-long pensions of a few superintendents.

I think one of the things Obama is trying to do is to return our country to the pre-Reagan era when greed was not the only motivator. The incentives in the private sector have become so great that it is more and more difficult for the public sector to recruit topnotch people.

Also it would be interesting to see where these high-paid people are from. After all, the NRO article notes that many of these pensions are from Long Island, a Republican bastion up until recently.

I know a woman who in the 1990s collected over $2 million when she cashed in her stock options. She was a technical illustrator for a large technology company. Capitalism creates some absurdities, but perhaps there should be greater regulation as Obama is doing.