Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
What Paul said. The Truth About Pensions – NYTimes.com:
Dean Baker has a deeply enlightening analysis of state pension shortfalls (pdf), containing a lot of stuff I didn’t know. The basic moral is that the official story these days — of years and years of huge giveaways to unions, resulting in gigantic, unpayable debts — is just wrong: to a very large extent, the pension shortfall has emerged just since 2007, thanks to the financial crisis [brought about by the banksters of Wall Street], and even then it’s not nearly as big relative to future state incomes as widely imagined. Here’s a key figure:
It puts an entirely different light on the situation. Whaddya know, we’re being sold a bill of goods.
By now you have all heard the cookie joke: a CEO, a tea party member, and a union worker are all sitting at a table when a plate with a dozen cookies arrives. Before anyone else can make a move, the CEO reaches out to rake in eleven of the cookies. When the other two look at him in surprise, the CEO locks eyes with the tea party member. "You better watch him," the executive says with a nod toward the union worker. "He wants a piece of your cookie."