Here’s a pretty good pair of graphics that show just how unsustainable California public sector finances have become over the last couple of years.
Outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a few words to go along with the pictures in this WSJ op-ed where the charts were spotted, but the words don’t seem necessary.
![[Most Recent USD from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_usd_en_2.gif)
This would have been worth pointing out:
“Few Californians in the private sector have $1 million in savings, but that’s effectively the retirement account they guarantee to public employees who opt to retire at age 55 and are entitled to a monthly, inflation-protected check of $3,000 for the rest of their lives. ”
Unbelievable…….
As an anti-union democrat I couldn’t agree more with Arnie.
The unemployment chart would be more fair if they were measured by percentage, since presumably there are more employees in the private sector, hence the chart looks worse than it is. That said, I completely agree with your underlying thesis. This will not end in a friendly manner.
This reminds me of every episode of “Intervention”. Nothing will change until the public sector cannot borrow cheaply anymore and knows it will not have a Federal bailout coming.
San Jose,CA police cheif is retiring at age 50.
His retirement package over the next 25 years-
$8,000,000.
Dude where are the furloughs in those graphs?
I think a state worker must have made the lower chart. 6,000 * 1 billion is 6 trillion dollars this year alone.
Furloughs do not equal unemployment. They are at worst a cut in pay and they certainly don’t affect the multimillion dollar pensions. On the other hand, the 1.2 million private sector unemployed have no income, no pension, and little prospect of working again. The only way to make this worse is if California is stupid enough to put Moonbeam back in the governor’s chair. Although, since he is one of the idiots who put this disaster into motion years ago, he deserves the job and California deserves him.
Are you kidding John, CA was at its peak during the Brown years. It was all the Repub governors after him that that screwed it up. They quadrupled the cost of a university degree and floated everything under the sun on a bond. Big spending on the credit card is the trade mark of Republican leadership. You can see it on all levels of government.
Leftists are funny. Reagan has been out of office for 20 years, 35 years since he was gov). The problem in CA is that both houses of the legislature have had a democratic majority since 1970, except for one year (95-96) for the lower house. And Californians, just like NYers, can blame themselves for crushing bond debt. They love to vote for bond propositions that someone else will repay.