The usefulness of unions and the pension paradox, Part 2
Last night, Bobblehead fired off a constructive rebuttal to my case for unionism and effort to untangle the paradox of public pensions. He text me to say he had fun writing it. Much like Jed Clampett, I struck a vein.
(“Paradox” feels like the wrong word to use, but, according to my MacBook dictionary, its primary definition is: “a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.” Sounds good, but how about “public pension quagmire” or “Pandora’s pension box”?)
Though I often think Bobblehead’s adolescent obsession with Margaret Thatcher gave him irreversible brain damage, most of the time I consider him an extremely knowledgeable and trustworthy political adviser. He bucks party rhetoric, considers the big picture, and develops sensible and thoughtful analysis. The rebuttal he wrote last night is a testament to that, and I do not even want to imagine the titillation he probably felt while hammering it out.
As usual when we wax political, he rolled up his sleeves to retrieve and play a couple choice face cards to start me reeling. That’s the PoliSci nerd and counselor in him, and I expect nothing less from a man who has lived and breathed politics since he squeezed out of the womb: kindly correcting me or injecting new facts and information to ponder. Though I still believe his complaints about the concept and practice of unionism were misplaced, he makes excellent points about “the demographic crunch we face” and “the modern Liberal, Western welfare state.”
Bobblehead has trained his crosshairs on the “liberal welfare state” since at least last summer. We were sitting on his porch, a metal patio table and two beers between us, staring out at the nighttime activities on his street, when he said something like, “You know what is going to drive this country into bankruptcy?” It’s exactly the kind of depressing, doomsday shit we love to discuss, and his answer to my usual “What?” was something along the lines of “Retirement” or “Pensions.” After that, I should have installed on his head some kind of pumpjack and collection system to milk and store his thoughts for refinement and sale.
However, there seems to be a lot of debate as to whether or not Social Security and public pensions are heading toward insolvency. Paul Krugman writes (in this oldish NYT column) that extending the life of the retirement program into the twenty-second century, with no change in benefits, would require less annual funding than we were spending on the Iraq War; the Social Security crisis, he says, is just a myth perpetuated by proponents of privatization. Krugman also brings up an interesting tidbit I did not know: Social Security is an independent trust separate from the federal government’s general fund. Technically, that means Social Security is self-sufficient. (The federal government apparently “raids” the fund every year when it issues bonds to the Social Security Administration, though there is very little concrete information about this online, even from the SSA itself.) Decreases in benefits or increases in the retirement age are other simple solutions that no politician wants to touch. The past decade has seen the IPERS administration begin to right the ship — though it is still off course — by raising contribution rates in an effort to ensure it will be able to support all its members.
So there are apparently fixes for the Social Security and public pension system. (I am, by no means right now, a firm supporter of either. The jury is still out while I continue doing research.) Learning of Social Security’s independence (the factoid of the day), however, further emphasizes the pension paradox (quagmire) Bobblehead bemoans:
Under the current structure of both Social Security and IPERS, if the Boomers are truly set to bankrupt both I suppose there is little benefit for us Millennials to pay into a program we will see no direct advantage of.
According to the NYT, Social Security paid out more funds than it took in in 2010, and the current projection is for the program to be completely exhausted by 2037. So what happens then? Most generation theorists say the first Millennials were born in the early-eighties, which means we will not be eligible to retire at 65 (likely not) until at last 2045, so we will not see a dime of retirement benefits from the SSA. Many Boomers, I am sure, will live to see Social Security dry up, and it will come at a very inopportune time: the oldest among them having passed 90, they will be entering their frailest and most dependent years. However, I can’t say I will feel sorry for them: they fucked themselves.
Once again, the Boomers’s nearsightedness will bite them in the ass — by then a very wrinkled ass that needs assistance to be wiped. The pension and Social Security paradox not only shafts Millennials and the generations after us, but also the very Boomers fighting for the preservation of unsustainable public pensions, keeping the retirement age at 65, and current benefits and tax levels. Unless Millennials all have four kids and there is some kind of unforeseen wave of innovation and another economic revolution, leading to a second golden age of Keynesianism, the only way to solve this problem is to bridge the generation gap, sit down at the roundtable, and agree there is an elephant in the room: unless we do something, we are all fucked.
What it comes down to is whether or not our elders — Baby Boom, Generation Jones, and Generation X — will make sacrifices for the benefit of everyone. If Bobblehead’s assumption that we live in a Putnamesque age of egoism is true — that a greater sense of community solidarity is dead — I am unsure if that will happen. That’s when we should say, “Fuck me? No, fuck you. I’m out.” Then, as we storm out, we aimlessly toss a burger patty that hits an innocent bystander.
No matter what, I still believe unionism is an effective and essential way to counter capitalist tyranny. But I also believe maintaining a sense of realism is an ideal way to plan for the future.
(“Paradox” feels like the wrong word to use, but, according to my MacBook dictionary, its primary definition is: “a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.” Sounds good, but how about “public pension quagmire” or “Pandora’s pension box”?)
Though I often think Bobblehead’s adolescent obsession with Margaret Thatcher gave him irreversible brain damage, most of the time I consider him an extremely knowledgeable and trustworthy political adviser. He bucks party rhetoric, considers the big picture, and develops sensible and thoughtful analysis. The rebuttal he wrote last night is a testament to that, and I do not even want to imagine the titillation he probably felt while hammering it out.
As usual when we wax political, he rolled up his sleeves to retrieve and play a couple choice face cards to start me reeling. That’s the PoliSci nerd and counselor in him, and I expect nothing less from a man who has lived and breathed politics since he squeezed out of the womb: kindly correcting me or injecting new facts and information to ponder. Though I still believe his complaints about the concept and practice of unionism were misplaced, he makes excellent points about “the demographic crunch we face” and “the modern Liberal, Western welfare state.”
Bobblehead has trained his crosshairs on the “liberal welfare state” since at least last summer. We were sitting on his porch, a metal patio table and two beers between us, staring out at the nighttime activities on his street, when he said something like, “You know what is going to drive this country into bankruptcy?” It’s exactly the kind of depressing, doomsday shit we love to discuss, and his answer to my usual “What?” was something along the lines of “Retirement” or “Pensions.” After that, I should have installed on his head some kind of pumpjack and collection system to milk and store his thoughts for refinement and sale.
However, there seems to be a lot of debate as to whether or not Social Security and public pensions are heading toward insolvency. Paul Krugman writes (in this oldish NYT column) that extending the life of the retirement program into the twenty-second century, with no change in benefits, would require less annual funding than we were spending on the Iraq War; the Social Security crisis, he says, is just a myth perpetuated by proponents of privatization. Krugman also brings up an interesting tidbit I did not know: Social Security is an independent trust separate from the federal government’s general fund. Technically, that means Social Security is self-sufficient. (The federal government apparently “raids” the fund every year when it issues bonds to the Social Security Administration, though there is very little concrete information about this online, even from the SSA itself.) Decreases in benefits or increases in the retirement age are other simple solutions that no politician wants to touch. The past decade has seen the IPERS administration begin to right the ship — though it is still off course — by raising contribution rates in an effort to ensure it will be able to support all its members.
So there are apparently fixes for the Social Security and public pension system. (I am, by no means right now, a firm supporter of either. The jury is still out while I continue doing research.) Learning of Social Security’s independence (the factoid of the day), however, further emphasizes the pension paradox (quagmire) Bobblehead bemoans:
Until younger workers are offered tangible proof about what possible benefit they could get out of slaving and sweating in a unionized work place where the sweat of their work is going to fund the retirement of their elders- with no one being left to fund their retirement, the community solidarity and strength in numbers The Quiet Man envisions will never materialize.
Under the current structure of both Social Security and IPERS, if the Boomers are truly set to bankrupt both I suppose there is little benefit for us Millennials to pay into a program we will see no direct advantage of.
According to the NYT, Social Security paid out more funds than it took in in 2010, and the current projection is for the program to be completely exhausted by 2037. So what happens then? Most generation theorists say the first Millennials were born in the early-eighties, which means we will not be eligible to retire at 65 (likely not) until at last 2045, so we will not see a dime of retirement benefits from the SSA. Many Boomers, I am sure, will live to see Social Security dry up, and it will come at a very inopportune time: the oldest among them having passed 90, they will be entering their frailest and most dependent years. However, I can’t say I will feel sorry for them: they fucked themselves.
Once again, the Boomers’s nearsightedness will bite them in the ass — by then a very wrinkled ass that needs assistance to be wiped. The pension and Social Security paradox not only shafts Millennials and the generations after us, but also the very Boomers fighting for the preservation of unsustainable public pensions, keeping the retirement age at 65, and current benefits and tax levels. Unless Millennials all have four kids and there is some kind of unforeseen wave of innovation and another economic revolution, leading to a second golden age of Keynesianism, the only way to solve this problem is to bridge the generation gap, sit down at the roundtable, and agree there is an elephant in the room: unless we do something, we are all fucked.
What it comes down to is whether or not our elders — Baby Boom, Generation Jones, and Generation X — will make sacrifices for the benefit of everyone. If Bobblehead’s assumption that we live in a Putnamesque age of egoism is true — that a greater sense of community solidarity is dead — I am unsure if that will happen. That’s when we should say, “Fuck me? No, fuck you. I’m out.” Then, as we storm out, we aimlessly toss a burger patty that hits an innocent bystander.
No matter what, I still believe unionism is an effective and essential way to counter capitalist tyranny. But I also believe maintaining a sense of realism is an ideal way to plan for the future.
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