j_b

Except that Lomborg is wrong (and he is no climate scientist, nor any kind of ecologist). We don't have centuries before the consequences of climate change ruin us (and kill a few people, albeit mostly brown people ... so who cares, right?)

JayB's list reeks of Lomborg the fraudster

Dude, I only pointed out for at least the 2nd time that your claims were false and you insisted despite the evidence. It's nobody's fault that you aren't qualified to discuss science, but trying to pull again the same lie is lame. Your intellectual integrity is lacking. Don't you have any pride?

On average, public employees earn less than comparable employees in the private sector. Why should they willingly concede the benefits that make up for the difference in salary?

Almost every single time we had a speculative boom and bust was when Hayek, Friedman et al were given a chance.

Nope, my memory isn't fading. Last time too you pasted a list of Easterbrook's publications as if they contained the claims he has otherwise made in non-peer reviewed pubs (then you ran away as you are about to do right now). Btw, there is nothing wrong with linking to a news article if it isn't making claims at odds with the science. What is abundantly clear is that you are either trying to be deceitful or you have no clue what you are discussing.

Everyone with a little time can confirm that the part cited at link 2 isn't peer-reviewed, whereas link 1 is a list of Easterbrook's publications that contain none of the affirmations made at link 2.

I see that you modified your post about my being an idiot for pointing out your deceit but it doesn't change that none of the peer reviewed publications you listed make the claims contained in the citations you pasted on page 1 of this thread. Denialists use this very same tactics routinely, i.e. take comments made to the press by a "skeptical" scientist (or comments published on the web) and try to make people believe these comments were published under peer review.

An idiot for pointing out that you are a liar and a poor one at that? I challenge you to find the citation you quoted in any of the peer-reviewed publications you listed. (btw, beware that conference abstracts aren't peer-reviewed).

Actually, you cited Easterbrook's non-peer reviewed web ramblings about modern climate change and linked to a list of his peer-reviewed publications that have little to do with modern climate change. Easterbrook is/was a decent glacial geologist but his unsubstantiated theories about climate change are far from being well received, which explains why they aren't accepted for publication. You have already been told the above the first time you used this common denialist sleight of hand, so it's not like you don't know about it. Either your memory is poor or you are trying to deceive people. Which is it?

Nobody is asking you to forecast what the markets will do next year. Returns have averaged ~10% for over 50 years and by your own business as usual logic (i.e no resource-ecosystem services limit) that is pretty much all that you need to know to estimate asset growth over the long term. Quit lying. As GAO says most pensions funds have pretty much sufficient assets to cover pay out for decades. Funds that are in trouble today are mostly those that didn't get funded adequately. BS. Revenue shortfalls are due to the economic crisis your Laissez Faire policies created. The money pension funds need to cover less than average returns comes from those years when returns exceed 8%. You appear to be either tone deaf or your ideological blinders prevent you from understanding what you read. Liar. "All service cut" is your model not mine. Where are your arguments toward increasing revenue by taxing the wealthy and corporations, slashing the military budget, for universal health care that only can solve cost increases (the real future deficit crisis we should worry about), etc ...

S&P averaged 6.5% growth over the last 20 years plus compounded dividends averaged ~3%. Shall I also do the addition for you? Over 30 and more years total returns averaged ~10%. You forget the part when markets perform significantly better than 8% and individual pensions aren’t credited for more than 8% in returns. Plus, the ability to better weather market fluctuations is an asset of programs like social security and public pension plans, which is why they are so much better than individual plans. Unfortunate that your ideology prevents you from seeing it since it has some obvious applications in other domains.

right, GAO doesn't do math, nor does Krugman, or Baker, etc

Are you trying to suggest that your policies tending to provide living wage level retirement only for upper tax brackets aren't regressive. Try to remember that pension benefits were intended to be insurance against poverty for those who couldn't work, many of whom are elderly (mean public pension payout in WA is $18,150)

Nobody but you and other regressives want to cut services. Evidently nobody but other regressives and I understand why you can't use the average pension payment for all living retirees when figuring out how to fund the obligations for recent and future retirees, either. I did no such thing. The Government Accountability Office found that public pension funds were almost fully funded according to the most up to date accounting practices. Lo and behold: Pensionscare Via Andrew Leonard, the rise in stocks since the financial crisis has made the financial position of public employee pension funds much better: “Public pension funds are experiencing a robust recovery from the historic market downturn of 2008-2009 — reporting strong investment returns, growing assets and funding levels on track to meet obligations,” said the National Conference of Public Employee Retirement Systems. The group, the largest trade association for public sector pensions, surveyed state and local systems representing 7.6 million people and assets exceeding $900 billion. It found that over the last year, funds have achieved an annual investment return of 13.5 percent, nearly double the 7.7 percent rate most assume. On average, said NCPERS, pension systems are 76.1 percent funded, meaning they can cover more than three-quarters of liabilities. Typically, pensions are considered fully funded when they surpass 80 percent. Things aren’t perfect, by a long shot. But that crushing pension deficit, which everyone knew was going to bankrupt all state and local governments? Mainly a creation of right-wing propaganda. Are you surprised? Leonard draws a wider conclusion: But the changed financial outlook does underscore an important point that defenders of public sector unions have been making for several years: Judging the financial prospects of a pension fund in the middle of a historic economic crash is a dumb thing to do. As the economy improves so too will fund performance. The lesson can be extrapolated to the larger challenges facing the federal government. The best deficit-reducing strategy is a growing economy that generates increased tax revenues. A misguided pivot to austerity, on the other hand, runs the clear risk of inducing slower economic growth, lower tax revenues and higher deficits. But the bleeding must continue until the patient recovers! http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/pensionscare/

Paul Krugman on public pensions: The Truth About Pensions Dean Baker has a deeply enlightening analysis of state pension shortfalls, containing a lot of stuff I didn’t know. The basic moral is that the official story these days — of years and years of huge giveaways to unions, resulting in gigantic, unpayable debts — is just wrong: to a very large extent, the pension shortfall has emerged just since 2007, thanks to the financial crisis, and even then it’s not nearly as big relative to future state incomes as widely imagined. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/the-truth-about-pensions/

The Post Decides to Scare Readers About the Finances of Public Pensions Tuesday, 06 September 2011 05:05 The Washington Post used a front page story to scare readers about public sector pensions, implying that they faced an enormous unfunded liability. It refers to "states facing, by one estimate, a combined $3 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities." It is unlikely that readers are able to assess the meaning of this $3 trillion figure in any meaningful way. It is worth noting first that it assumes that the stock market will provide a return that is approximately half of its historic average over the next three decades. If the economy and profits grow as projected, it would be necessary for stock prices to fall so much that they would have to be negative before the end of the 30-year period over which pensions are typically evaluated. If we take the more typical figure of $1 trillion and compare it to future GDP, it is equal to approximately 0.2 percent of projected GDP over the 30 year planning period. By comparison, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have added approximately 1.6 percentage points of GDP to the military budget. This means that the unfunded liability of state and local pensions is approximately one eighth as large as the costs of these wars. This sort of context might have been helpful to readers. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-post-decides-to-scare-readers-about-the-finances-of-public-pensions

Nobody but you and other regressives want to cut services.

GAO Report to the Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate.

The Non-Existent Public Pension Funding Crisis For years, right-wing groups have been beating the drums to roll back decent pensions and retirement benefits for American workers. At the federal level, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, ranking member on the U.S. House Budget Committee, proposed a "Road Map" plan to privatize social security, cut payments and slash Medicare benefits for all seniors. Similarly, state-based conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have called for cutting public employee pension and health care benefits and replacing them with less secure 401k-style plans that would inevitably leave many retirees in poverty. Yet despite these attacks and in the midst of financial meltdowns in the private sector, state public pensions are largely a success story, riding out the economic storm, delivering benefits to families, helping drive economic demand in state economies, and projecting solvency for decades to come. As this Dispatch will emphasize, there is no crisis in most state retirement systems, even according to the numbers of the researchers demanding state leaders take unneeded action to cut the incomes of retirees. And despite the hype from a few carefully selected anecdotes of retirees gaming pension systems, the reality is that the overwhelming number of public employees receive pretty bare-bones benefits, in some cases not enough even to keep them out of poverty. We do need a debate on public pensions, but one that sees protecting them as part of a broader campaign to restore retirement security for all American workers, especially in the wake of a stock market collapse that has revealed the empty promises of Wall Street in hyping 401k-style private accounts as a substitute for the guaranteed retirement income of social security and defined-benefit pensions. Public pensions are actually a key tool for driving economic growth in the states, both through the purchasing power of retirees themselves and through the direct investments of pension assets in job creation. Any reforms undertaken should be done to both enhance the positive economic role of retirement systems in our state economies and to increase equity among retirees to raise living standards for low-income retirees. http://www.progressivestates.org/news/dispatch/no-crisis-in-public-retirement-systems-debunking-the-hype-and-the-attacks-on-employee-

Says the bozo whose anti-public employee/anti-government side pretty much only relies on Kock think tanks propaganda By the way, the numbers on public pensions are from state treasurers. i.e. the type of numbers that academics count on.

Sounds like a good recipe for an economic depression. "Pension benefits result in $3.5 billion a year in state economic activity, as well as 23,000 jobs. For every dollar contributed by public employers for pensions, over nine dollars is generated in our economy, and through the multiplier effects of consumption expenditures, 40% of those public contributions are returned as tax revenues to public entities. 475,000 workers and retirees are members of these public pension systems – one out of every fourteen residents in Washington state. 3 Public pensions deliver regular, dependable monthly benefits to retired public servants. This is in stark contrast to the private sector, where half of workers lack any employer-based retirement plan and risky defined contribution plans have become the norm. Individuals and businesses in Washington and across the country have more money, income and wealth than 30 years ago when public and private sector pensions were strongly supported."

The neanderthals finally found someone who made too much money and it's a public employee LOLZ

Public pension mean annual benefit paid in New York state: $18,300. In Washington State: $18,150. Those public employees are such leaches! (Thanks to union thugs, too)

It's your prerogative to align with regressives.