While driving in to work today, NPR regaled me with stories of the disastrous pension underfunding in Illinois. I've been ranting about this for a while (it's not just Illinois with the problem -- most other states and many cities are in deep holes, too), so I'm a receptive audience. The hole in Illinois is apparently 78 billion dollars and counting. They explain that state workers there can apparently retire at 55 or 60 with essentially full salary as a pension (if they've worked sufficiently long). No idea if that's accurate, but we have something similar in CA, so it's likely that it's essentially correct. Then, they bring a union guy on to explain how the poor workers give up FOUR PERCENT of their salary in order to deserve this pension. And the reporter didn't break out into loud guffaws (or profanity). And the voters don't go completely bonkers when the unions advocate for higher taxes to fund the pensions.

The thing is, I wonder how many people realize how ridiculous it is to think that 4 percent of salary would be enough to fund that sort of a pension. Probably not many, or people would be sharpening their pitchforks over this as much or more than they're sharpening their pitchforks over <fill in your pet cause here>.

If public sector employees were paid much less than the private sector, I could buy into this -- work for the state, get paid less, but get set for life. But they're not paid less than the private sector as far as I can tell.

For me, this issue is a bit of a litmus test -- if someone talks about underfunded education or not high enough taxes for this or that, and doesn't raise the pension issue as part of the reason it's hard to fund this or that, then I just can't take them too seriously...