How long the greed?N.Y. Teachers' Pension Change Prompts Rush to Lock In Benefits - WSJ.com

N.Y. Teachers' Pension Change Prompts Rush to Lock In Benefits - WSJ.com

The unions have had their selfish blinders on; and, let's hope, what goes around fairly comes around.

I'm more familiar with the egregious behavior of the teachers union in California; but, from what I read, it's the same in other states.

The union wants to preserve seniority benefits and maintain no accountability for performance. As a result, education costs are too high and results are too low.

Unions in the US try to get as much as they can for their members and by taking too much out of the system, they kill it or sorely wound it.

Right now the US is thinking it will have low interest rates to support the socialization of the economy while, at the same time, its economic competitors in Asia are more fairly allocating economic returns to those who produce them.

If one looks at the economic performance of California, Michigan or the UAW, it would appear unequivocally obvious that too much government spending and too high taxes result in lost jobs, businesses leaving, higher unemployment and higher interest rates.

Part of this excess is in the overly generous benefits paid in retirement (in other words, in a period when there is absolutely no production, just consumption).

Almost everyone accepts that a family that overspends on its credit cards it likely to eventually have to go bankrupt. But, when it's government that is overspending, somehow people feel it can go on indefinitely. Maybe it can or maybe it can't.

But, that's the choice. As for the teachers and other public unions, they appear to be banking on the fact that their pensions and benefits are not overly generous and that the rest of society will continue to accept and be able to bear these costs. We'll see!

All I'm saying is that it appears to me that it's a position which has already caused the economy to be losing its economic potential and like a small leak in a balloon, as less air remains, you either plug the hole or wait for the balloon to shrink further. I see the public unions hoping to continue be able to such air from the balloon of the economy and hope that there's some other magic source of new air. Maybe there will be? But, so far, it appears as though few forecasters see jobs coming back to cut the unemployment/underemployment rate.

To restore the economy, those who produce need to be rewarded and those who don't produce have to recognize that they were right in guessing they were being fed a bill of goods on their ability to retire early, etc.

Those pensions are consumption, not investment, not anything contributing to the future or the rebuilding of society; so, who should sacrifice?