Libertarian Public Service Announcement:
-When we talk about state failure in terms of “who regulates the regulators?”, this would be an example of what we mean:
The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public government employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into trillions of dollars.
But the accounting techniques used by state and local governments to balance their pension books disguise the extent of the crisis facing these retirees and the taxpayers who may ultimately be called on to pay the freight, according to a growing number of leading financial analysts.
State governments alone have reported they are already confronting a deficit of at least $750 billion to cover the cost of the retirement benefits they have promised. But that figure likely underestimates the actual shortfall because of the range of methods they use to make their calculations, including practices that have been barred in the private sector for decades.
Local governments use these same techniques for their pension funds and face deficits that further contribute to what some investors and analysts say may be shaping up to be a massive breach of faith with a generation of public government employees. (emphasis mine)
On the bright side, those rules aren’t even serving the purpose people thought in the “private” sector either, so you could rationalize this as the State for once avoiding something that doesn’t help. If you’re desperate, that is.
