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Comment by confluence | Hacker News Reader

Pension reform makes me laugh. "Oh yeah, this is a massive contract we signed, we want to renege on it."

No corporation would stand by this in terms of major signed projects or debts without a massive fight. If renegotiation was required for payment to occur, either in the form of bankruptcy or reduced rates, then it would be a crushing asset grab, with no quarter given. The person who took on a contract they could not afford rightly should be squeezed to crap.

But because it's poor people, they are the ones who have to make the sacrifice when someone wants to renege on their contract?

Hilarious.

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Sure, with a company you can liquidate it and creditors can seize whatever assets are available. How are you going to do that with a city or a state? Is the city of Atlanta supposed to close up shop and hand over whatever assets it has to pensioners? Then what? Atlanta just continues on with no city government to provide public services?

Why not? Is there a requirement that every city which once existed continues to exist? If it really can't sustain itself, then why is it there?

Raise taxes and meet your obligations. Reduce them if need be under negotiation like any kind of bad debt situation, because that's what it is.

There's a limited amount a city or state can raise taxes. If they're too high, wealthy people will just leave. It's not hard to move if you have money. It does screw over the poor people left behind who now have high taxes and no tax base to pay for government services.

Reducing the pension burden is exactly Arnold and others are trying to do. The result of that is that some people are not going to get the pensions they thought they were. That sucks, but it's better than dissolving the government altogether.

"Raise taxes and meet your obligations" And watch revenue and job generating companies move to locations with lower overhead making the situation even worse. It's not so simple as just raising taxes. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

> Raise taxes and meet your obligations

You mean steal money from other people to pay for promises they had no say in making.

That's what's fundamentally unjust about government pensions: I'm being forced to pay for promises made before I was even old enough to vote.

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