Really Bad Reporting in Wisconsin: Who 'Contributes' to Public Workers' Pensions?

[Hannah Bell]

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans. Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not...

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash...

Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

Gov. Walker says that he wants them to "contribute more" via deductions from their paychecks. But since the workers already contribute 100 percent of the money going to the pension plan the real issue is changing the accounting for this to reduce cash wages.

http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8EDJYS?OpenDocument

[City of Mills]

1. And when the public workers have less money to spend

on private businesses, they will suffer too, and the vicious cycle continues...reminds me of those videos where the ants circle around each other until they drop dead. Is this what we want?

Your taxes (OUR taxes) pay the negotiated salaries of public employees, who spend money in the private sector.

The Republicans want to cut public employee salaries and give the savings to corporations and their CEOs, who stockpile the money, keeping it out of the economy.

[Hannah Bell]

2. stockpile it? they send it to china, or emerging markets' stock markets, or

take a flyer on commodities so you pay more for gas & flour & third-world peasants starve.

it's a giant world-wide cluster fuck that ends in death.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

3. This is the same misnomer at the federal level. The Republican Hate Machine

has so vilified public workers at ALL levels of government that most Americans assume that federal employees like myself get "FREE" health care and "FREE" retirement.

WE. DO. NOT!!!!!

We allot a certain percentage from our salaries for those programs. We get NOTHING for free!!!

*banging head against the wall*

[Omaha Steve]

4. I was going to post this

To late to R. Thanks for posting this Hannah Bell.

OS