The comments posted on this message board represent the individual opinions of their respective posters only and are not to be construed as statements of proven or alleged fact.
Edited to remove improper use of copyrighted material. Posters — please honor copyright law... links and fair use snippets only. Do not copy-and-paste large portions of complete articles. Thanks! —Ted E.This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,
Well, the last test results of our schools seems to indicate we get what we pay for. You can split hairs over whether we could do a little better compared to the north shore schools per student expense, but compared to our peers or the rest of the nation, seems we do pretty good for what we pay.
Unnecessary, repetitive and redundant quote removed. --Ted E.
The odds probably favor this, but it's no guarantee.
Some of these kids may be too spoiled for their own good. Some children from these folks end up on drugs or never quite find their way to graduating from a 4 year school. I've seen a surprising number of kids from these families not fall in their parents well educated foot steps.
There are plenty of people from limited means and parents without a great education do very well, Supreme Court Justice Thomas comes to mind.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,
So the poor and uneducated produce bad students? And it has nothing to do with the schools? Sort of a self fulfilling prophecy on why we should keep ignoring disadvantaged/poorly funded school systems.
Hmmm. Illinois did invest its pension fund. What Illinois did was to hand out higher benefits. Without requiring more contributions.
What also happened was that because the investments did so well. Illinois, like just about everyone else acted like it was going to last forever. They used the high rate of return to hand out more benefits and at the same not put more TAXPAYER money in it.
Once the market collapsed all those assumptions were off.
As for paying the piper. Good luck with that, Texas is looking better every day.
Like Gus points out this is not strictly an Illinois problem. Other states, municipalities are in similar situations. Some are even looking at Chapter Nine. Los Angeles is looking at laying off more than a thousand workers because it will have to make higher contributions to its pension funds.
Canada is looking at either a pay freeze for all government employees and trying to renegotiate some of its benefits.
Greece is in deep trouble in large part because of its generous pension benefits. Which cover roughly thirty percent of its population.
Read an editorial in today's Tribune about Illinois' fiscal woes, mainly pension and retiree health care. Evidently, Illinois is dead last among all 50 states in the severity of pension underfunding.
Spin that mantra about "high benefits" all you want but the truth is we've been robbing the pension funds for decades thereby losing the opportunity to receive investment returns. Compounded year after year. Plus we borrowed $10.1 billion in 2003 to try to restore some of the funds and spent it on pork instead.
WOW. The WSJ reported yesterday that only 4 states in the country kept up with funding their pension obligations- FL,NY,WA,WI. They note the problem started way before the recession (depression?). IL is of course worst at 54% funded. The cumulative debt owed nationwide is 1 trillion $ before losses due to the recession!
So I guess my point could be we should vote all of them out (fed and state). But who do we vote in? Some are bailing already like Bayr (sp?) but he actually could be a good one who is disillusioned by the current system.
