"Taxpayers in the Big Apple are forced to pay $144,000 a year for salary, health and pension benefits for garbage workers, who are unskilled but unionized laborers."
NYC is not alone, of course. Other cities and states face similar out-of-control expenses for government employees. These rampant benefit increases occurred when governments bought in to union demands for benefits over the last decades. Governments believed that the 8% return they were getting on their benefit fund investments would continue forever.
Some would like government to rescind these contracts and get spending under control.
"The Contract Clause, [of the U.S. Constitution], prohibits states from enacting any law that retroactively impairs contract rights, such as defined benefit pensions and health care policies. .....
Local governments that are running out of money and are willing to go bankrupt could probably wipe out the pensions if they really wanted to.....
Alternatively, says Hans Bader, a senior attorney at the libertarian think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Republican House, which just overturned President Obama's health-care reform could impose a tax for excessive pensions and benefits on those local and state government workers, and refund the monies to their troubled states and municipalities.
"Liberals like excess profits taxes levied on oil companies. Why not take a page out of their playbook and impose an excess profits tax on public employees?"
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