Debts Should Be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People - Dean Baker

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.truth-out.org/debts-should-be-honored-except-when-money-is-owed-working-people67301

This seems to be the lesson that our nation's leaders are trying to pound home to us. According to The New York Times, members of Congress are secretly running around in closets and back alleys working up a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy.

According to the article, a main goal of state bankruptcy is to allow states to default on their pension obligations. This means that states will be able to tell workers, including those already retired, that they are out of luck. Teachers, highway patrol officers, and other government employees, some of whom worked decades for the government, will be told that their contracts no longer mean anything. They will not get the pensions that they were expecting.

Depending on the specific circumstances, they may find their pensions cut back 20 percent, 30 percent, perhaps even 50 percent. There would be no guarantees if a state goes into bankruptcy.

There has been a concerted effort to bash public-sector employees by either highlighting the few instances where pensions actually are exorbitant, or just making things up. Untruths about Goldman Sachs, General Electric, or any other major company rarely appear in the media and are usually quickly corrected when they do. However, exaggerations or outright fabrication are a standard practice for those who report on state and local budgets when it comes to public employees.

More at the link --

[Catherina]

1. Hey Dean, does that apply to Social Security? Rec'd n/t

[saras]

2. It's worked for Indian treaties for 200+ years

Why shouldn't it work for white people?

If you were sucker enough to work for them for that long based on words that government officials wrote on pieces of paper, you were a sucker. Tough.

Corporations, on the other hand, are Gods, and you can't afford to even think bad thoughts about them, because they know what you think as well as what you do, and you will be judged eternally for it.

[Hannah Bell]

3. kr

[old mark]

4. K&R- Part of the "trickle down" theory of economics...it is trickling all over us

right now, and will be pouring very soon.


mark

[cutlassmama]

5. We should be better than this