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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   24131 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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To be fair, most government-paid civil engineers take a much lower salary than they could in the private sector. So it's not quite that this guy figured out a hack here, only that he sacrificed early to reap a larger return later. Similarly the State took the inverse deal: pay him less now in exchange for more later, in order to make their budgets temporarily look better.

I think the solution for both is actuarial integrity -- defined benefit plans need to be run in such a way that the State pays in year X the expected future costs of all (incremental) future liabilities accrued during year X. The only real exploitation is that voters in X accrue liability for year >X without paying for it, another intertemporal transfer of wealth.

A non-solution (afaict) is for governments not to hire competent civil servants and instead farm that stuff out to McKinsey consultants and others. Not because the McKinsey consultants aren't smart, but because it's a diffusion of accountability that ultimately costs Idaho more than paying competitive salaries for in-house expertise.

[ One astute commenter noted that one good that McKinsey does produce is laundering the low status of working for bumfuck Idaho into PMC-respectability. An excellent observation, if something of a tangent here. ]

Presumably they have a net positive effect on GDP when measured on the spending side, and if we ASSUME they don't declare bankruptcy, or renege and duck out on the debt, or just die early (not something I wish on them), they're helping the engine of Capitalism in this country sputter along.

Eh, bankruptcy is (in expectation) priced into the transactions. Lenders make out fine charging these two 7% interest on their HELOC and car note. It's not like dumping it on the fisc.

Their retirement on the public dime, OTOH, will certainly be dumped on us.

A big issue for public pensions is that many were originally paid for with corruption. Public unions promised politicians support in exchange for pensions. Taxpayers at the time happy because they didn't get stuck with a big bill at the time, but now the bills are coming due. So I don't really have much problem giving these pensioners a haircut; their pensions are dirty money.

No different than any other public obligation or liability. Might as well shaft municipal bondholders too on this theory,

Yes. Difference is there's at least some chance the bondholders will be shafted.

Municipal bondholders will not be shafted because investors, quite reasonably, don't purchase them unless required to by law, and the people/institutions required to buy them by law are big institutions that can afford good lobbyists.

Munis can be attractive since they are tax exempt. HNW individuals should probably have a small sum in Munis

I've looked at NJ munis. They suck (for good reason).

Well fed and state tax free. If you are in highest bracket basically double the yield

Twice nothing is still nothing.

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