re: #295 albusteve

earlier, some states had the initial big problems…returns on investments were not footing the bill…CA, Jersey, Illinois…the deals were toxic to the states and the numbers were unreasonable…10 years on the fire dept and cop 100k year…that sort of stuff…but as the markets continue to fail, the same problem has spread and now even reasonable pensions are getting clobbered…what were these states thinking?…to me it’s as irresponsible as top heavy corporate salaries

sure, the overly generous pensions were one of the factors in many state deficits…but as has been pointed out, a lot of other states (with far less generous pensions) have huge deficits that are just as bad in terms of % of state GDP…so many factors involved it can’t be boiled down to one…it’s kinda like blaming whole housing crisis on fannie and freddie