I believe that the "salad days" of generous pensions and benefits to public employees is now over.
So says Columnist Pat Buchanan. He is pessimistic about a possible downward spiral, convinced that spending cuts and tax increases will drive residents out of failing cities and into neighboring states, exacerbating the spiral of declining city revenue and social cohesion in the suffering cities throughout the state of California,
Mr. Buchanan's signature cynicism shines through once again, and casts a harsh yet hollow glow. I think that this heavy trend of severe budget cuts and necessary market corrections are all for the best — finally, city leaders will have to amass the courage to cut benefits to once-powerful public sector unions en masse.
Public sector unions have elected complaisant and complicit leadership for too long, provoking them into offering over-generous contracts, which have eroded and ultimately dried out the tax based of municipal governments.
City leaders in the past had no business pledging so much money, including the onerous obligations into the distant future, regardless of the investment funding which was supposed to keep the pension funds flush, in good times or in bad.
Employees need to be responsible for their own fiscal future. They know better what quality of life that they want to create for themselves. They have the insight and the authority to diversify investments or save their money for a rainy day.
The government has to get out of the financier business. Though a growing number of voters may suspect Wall Street of unmitigating fraud and graft, the state deals in such folly and loss in far greater measure, with far more disastrous results for the taxpayer, who suffers the losses.