The Observation Deck

All public employee pensions are underfunded. At some point in the near future that unfunded liability will have to be financed by massive tax increases.

In the Lakewood City School district the district not only pays the 14% employer contribution but also the 10% employee contribution. Next spring the district will be asking for property tax increase to cover the next round of construction costs. They will also need another substantial property tax increase to pay for promised pensions and raises.

Is it time to cut those benefits or ask the employees to pay the employee portion of the pension costs?

See this article for more info:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 0684.story

How do Pensions work? Do they owe you a monthly check until you die? Do they owe your estate nothing after you and your spouse die?

The solution may be cheaper junk food, cheaper bigger more tvs and channels and constant electronic music noise, and cheaper motoring.

It is the new Laffer Curve. Plot the expense and abundance of these things on the X axis. Life-time health care expenses, or even second half of lifetime health expenses, are a function of X. If people totally saturate themselves with junk food, industrial food, and little physical and mental activity, many of them will drop dead before they turn 65. Social Security and Pension Funds can save a lot of money.

Make this stuff a little more expensive and people have to pace themselves a bit, so more people will inch along and die slower and expensively.

Towards the bend people begin living less expensively and perhaps are fitter in their later years. At the last 10th of this continuum most of us will age as vigorously as the iconic Northern Mid-west Farmers, Asian American Carpenters, Japanese or Okinawan agricultural workers, Icelandic Supermen, Art Linkletter, the average Cuban, or even Ray Walston.

It becomes a function of agricultural reform, pedestrian centered infrastructure, manufacturing protectionism and anti-monopoly enforcement.