California may have a budget

[DinoDoc]

BTW: You can't have a pension system into which employees pay for 40 years and then suddenly say, "Whoops, ha ha! We're not going to pay you even though we promised to."

You kinda have to: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/po...tory?track=rss

[Zkribbler]

You kinda have to: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/po...tory?track=rss

Did you read the article you linked to? (a) Nowhere does it say pensions are going to be done away with. (b) What it does say is that, during the last two years, 2 pension funds in California lost 25% of their value. BTW: During that same time period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped from 14,000 to 9,000, i.e. dropped 33% of its value. Ergo, these two funds did better than the DJIA.

[Kuciwalker]

Pension funds are supposed to do better than stuff like the DJIA in bad times.

[Patroklos]

Funny, as a government employee at the time, I never heard of this.

Some of the long-termers I knew were on Plan A. They were looking at retirement at close to 100% of their salaries. But that plan was too expensive, so Plan B was instituted. Oops, that proved to be too expensive, so Plan C came into being. But that also was too expensive. When I was hired in the late 80's, Plan D was in effect.

BTW: You can't have a pension system into which employees pay for 40 years and then suddenly say, "Whoops, ha ha! We're not going to pay you even though we promised to."

I didn't mean scrap as in do without, I meant scrap as in replace it with something that makes at least a little bit of sense. Hell, at least match the Federal pension system which is pretty much considered far to generous by most and that caps out at less than 50%.

[KrazyHorse]

Kuci

One would assume...

Also, WTF do people use the DJIA to benchmark? It's only got ~20% of US market cap

[Felch]

People use the Dow because they're retarded. Also, it's got the best publicity. Publicity plus retardation equals popularity.

See also: Paris Hilton, professional sports, Apple, and Michael Bay films

[KrazyHorse]

...not to mention the fact that DJIA is price weighted. Which is extra-retarded.