The Problem of Wisconsin

(And every other state) reminds me a lot of someone (the states) with a trust fund who invested it wrong and lost everything. So, the trust fund person says something like, "Where is my money to pay my bills?" and his lawyer says something like, "Doesn't matter. You are now homeless."

But in regard to all the states none of them have been in a situation like this since the Great Depression. So, when state employees were allowed to unionize (firepersons, policepersons, and teacher etc) their benefit packages got higher and higher. In fact, here in California some teachers I heard get 6 thousand dollars a month during retirement (which is great if you can get it).

However, in Wisconsin and in every other state they are dealing with incredible tax shortfalls of businesses and individuals going bankrupt and of people being laid off in droves collecting unemployment insurance. And in the end retirement plans only work if there is more money going into that fund than the money going out  in pension payments. So, now states have to choose whether to make their retired state employees go bankrupt or to let their states and Federal Government go bankrupt.

Even though I'm saying all this very simplistically, all you have to do is to watch what happened in Greece. Because what is happening here in regard to all this in some ways will be Greece in slow motion in regard to retirement pensions for state employees. There simply is no humane solution to this problem that I can presently see. In the long run either States and the Federal Government go bankrupt or state employee pensions either cease to exist or are very modified. I know this is terrifying but this is a pretty terrifying world we live in and any realistic person would have known that this would happen eventually. However, politicians are only realistic for 4 to 6 years (or whatever term they serve). However, the rest of us have to live with it 25, 50, and 75 years along the way or more.

Likely, what will happen will make people not trust state or Federal Governments to actually give them retirement money or Social Security or unemployment compensation and people will likely have to be much more independent and self reliant like they were before the 1930s. Whether this is good or bad I don't know but this is what I actually see coming all over the world during the next 50 years.