Hi Laura
I hope you are doing well.
I was thinking about attending that event tonight in
Evanston on the pension crisis. But
either way, since the topic is on hand, the topic of pensions is one that needs
to be discussed.
A number of people are saying that the pensions in Illinois are
a promise that must be kept. Aren’t
people allowed to acknowledge that they made a mistake?
But they fail to grasp one important basic concept here: You
can’t make promises for other people and their money.
I can promise that I will pay your rent for the rest of your
life. It’s my money, and I can do with
it whatever I want, assuming, of course, that I have enough money to do
it. But I cannot promise that other
people will pay your rent. That’s up to
the other people.
What I’m saying is that someone 50 years ago can’t make a
promise that other people are supposed to keep.
Even if the whole state at that time voted on it, they don’t have a
right to compel people in the future to keep their promises.
The cost of pensions is easily the biggest single problem in
Illinois. Actually, there is a bigger
one, but this one has bankrupted the state.
And it’s going to drive people a lot more people out of the state. I had to retire a few years ago due to health
issues, and we are taxed at our limit right now. If our property taxes go any higher, we’re
going to have to move, and Michigan is a real possibility. My wife goes there a lot for vacations with
her cousins.
The Illinois State Constitution has to be changed. The pension system must be redone, top to
bottom. I have a pension. I get around $12,000 a year for 20 years of
union work. What is different is that I
am paid out of contributions that my employer paid into a fund out of his
profits. The state sees funding as an
unlimited resource that they only have to figure out the way to best get
it. This is wrong. The state sees the people as their servants
rather than seeing itself as the people’s servant. The rulermakers are making the rules, and
they are seeing that they get as much as they can from the public. This is wrong.
And as long as I’m writing here, I should add that I believe
the graduated income tax should be killed.
The single biggest piece of evidence for its impropriety is the
way that it is being promoted. They are asking
that people vote for a tax on other people.
The people are not voting on a measure that affects them, but a measure
that only affects other people. It is
emphasized over and over that 97% of the people won’t be affected, indeed a lot
of them will even benefit by taxing other people.
That’s bribery. Politicians
are paying people to vote for taking more money from other people. What these people don’t realize is that once
the graduated tax is in place, it will make raising taxes on everyone a lot
easier in the future. When everyone pays
the same rate, then politicians are accountable to everyone for every tax
increase. But with a graduated tax rate,
each bracket only contains a fraction of the population, so their voice is
muted.
And there is no talk of spending cuts. I worked my entire career in business. Businesses routinely have hiring freezes to
cut down on low production. The government
sees itself as beyond that. There is
nothing to be cut. Ever. From anywhere. I find that criminally abuse of the public
trust: spending people’s money without regard for their permission or financial
ability. They spend and then expect
people to come along and pay for it all.
That is wrong.
Laura, I won’t be there tonight. I have too much I need to do, and I don’t
expect I would have any or enough time there to say what I think to everyone
else, so I leave this with you. You are
the one who will be voting on these things.
I wish you the very best.
Larry
