The employee pension system is a long-failed model. When private sector companies came to this conclusion eons ago, many of them terminated pension benefits for new hires and grandfathered their obligation out of existence. When the public sector came to the same conclusion, they formed unions and spent billions of dollars electing legislators who promised they would keep bleeding productive society dry at their behest.
And now, productive society has long since run out of blood to give. Should any of these perpetually irresponsible states come begging to Washington for a bailout, they should be run out of town on a rail. Hopefully, our federal legislators learned from the first ill-advised bailouts that it’s a grave error to reward bad behavior. If not, they could consult any parent – or any honest economist.