Editor, OBSERVER:
When will the representatives elected by we the people start representing us instead of the government employment complex?
The public pension system is structurally broken. Using taxpayer dollars to invest in the stock market has proven to be much too risky at the taxpayers' expense. And to compound the problem, during the '80s and '90s when the stock market was in a bull market, the public employees' increased their retirement income they are to receive from these public pension funds.
Now that the market is not performing like a bull, the taxpayers are supposed to make up the difference. This is like going to a casino and when you win partying it up and having a good old time. Then when you lose nothing changes, the party continues because more cash is there to bail you out.
In the current system, a defined benefit plan, the risk is not on the public employee because it has been transferred to the taxpayer. This is another system where the profits are distributed to the members and the losses are spread out to society. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, when the market does outperform it is because the private sector has capitalized on the assets available in the free market.
One of these assets is labor so the public employees' use our tax dollars to invest in the private sector's hard work to get a return from the excess that the private sector creates. The government employment complex has all the angles covered. Even FDR said that public unions would not be good for society. I don't think our founding fathers had this type of government in mind.
Currently, the people are serving the government, taxation without representation. This system is doomed to fail.
DAVID HOSMER,
Brocton
