If you can fly in firefighters from Arkansas every day, I'm sure you can get away with paying them $20k/year

I really try but i can't help but be rustled.

We need to work the pensions vs 401k angle into this discussion.

401k's are basically a failed scam. (Though many private pensions are also something of a scam.) America's retirement investment, by in large, seems to be based around the idea of housing appreciation. That's fine, but the 35 and under crowd is saddled with education debt and isn't paid particularly well. The American economy is the revenge of the olds (well, a subset of them).

The City of San Francisco has an annual budget roughly equal to the state of Nevada's.

9.6 billion dollars and ~31,000 employees.

Avg employee gets 108k salary and 50k in benefits. Good work if you can get it.

Good luck with that when/if San Francisco ever falls even slightly out of fashion.

Yea this is correct afaik.

I think I read only one-third of Americans had any retirement savings whatsoever.

And you are correct that many Boomers have a large percentage of their net worth tied up in their homes whist Millennial home-ownership rate and income is substantially lower than their parents generation. Which begs the question, who is going to cash the Boomers out?

The dream is to be able to save nothing and have an adequate retirement. Public pensions are in the best position to do this, since they can just make whatever promises they want and leave the saving part to the federal government or future taxpayers when their pension plans go bust. Private pensions are kind of terrible at it since ERISA makes them save a bunch of money to go with their promises and then they exacerbate the problem by blowing it all on hedge fund fees. 401ks are actually the best at achieving the save-nothing prong of the dream, but obviously suuuper dicey on the adequate retirement side. Hope for a UBI I guess?

If and when it does, living expenses should fall precipitously, which won't necessitate such high incomes.

omg, I just found a whole thread of liberals hand waiving away the things learned in the DNC email hack!!! yesss!

omnomnom so delicious.

How are 401k plans a scam?

Wake up guys, this California thing is fake news. All of those shortfalls can be recovered by killing Betsy DeVos and taking her money.

I see this as one of the bigger upcoming disasters for our country, we essentially have a huge chunk of people who are at or near the point where they should be retiring, but they just can't for one reason or another. It is, in my opinion, inevitably going to cause a lot of pain to not just the boomers themselves, but their children as well. And like, the current solution is just social security/medicare, which isn't bad, but it doesn't at all cover living expenses for a significant chunk of people.

Well the good news is Paul Ryan wants to "fix" Social Security and Medicare. So even those minimal safety nets could be gone soon.

https://twitter.com/spacecrone/statu...23737389203456

I never understood why so many of you who look forward to olds dying out are so pro SS and Medicare.

Maybe they aren't being literal when they talk about them dying off?

Maybe I think the richest country on earth should take care of it's seniors?

suzzer, that doesn't really address my question, not that I am accusing you of taking the position of looking forward to old people dying off.

stinkubus, perhaps you are right, but there are probably more than a couple people who weren't saying it in jest and who didn't realize the contradiction.

There is some philosophical ideas that should be debated here though about the value of capitol vs labor and the time value of money and how death is the great equalizer.

We owe Beysy Devos an apology. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/w...302-story.html

This is the most disturbing part of the article imo.

Critics call it a litmus test but really it is political affirmative action, though obviously they can't use that term.

$108k in SF is equivalent to what in Nevada?

One bedroom apartment median rental price in SF is $3590. Two bedroom is $4870.

I'd have gone with something more like "it's really ****ing insane" but they probably couldn't use that term either.

That's kind of old news, and it's the only reason why anyone was looking at the guy's credentials.

Of course its a terrible idea. I was just pointing out one of the many routes of attack defenders of that initiative could use.