Union Pensions Verses Corporate Access : States Buying Jobs?

Why would anyone believe anything that a union would trot out as fact, especially when it comes to their pensions and corporate access to state monies? The unions have no reason to tell the truth after decades of lying about who they are what they want. It isn't about the workers and their needs, this is strictly about power and the ability to get it and keep it.

The fact that states saddle up to corporation is founded in common sense, corporation bring jobs and jobs bring tax revenue. Does this always work to the benefit of the taxpayers, hell no, but given the fact if there are no good reasons for corporation to locate in a state, there won't be any jobs. Is there waste and fraud in some cases, sure, but what is the trade off if a state can't find willing takers for crating jobs while other states succeed in doing so offering sweet deals to locate? Why does this take rocket science?

And the problem of unions being able to fund pensions is on going, union leaders complain the states are using tax dollars inappropriately, but at the same time they are using union dues as a slush fund as a tool to keep union leadership in power and supply an endless flow of money to democrats which in turn legislate in favor of the unions.

Did anyone ever wonder how the pensions could be well funded if the unions used the money they give the democrats for the pensions? The last election saw the unions political funding of democrats exceed more the $400 million. What's up with that?

Little wonder there such a close relationship between big labor and the progressive socialist liberal democrats, and why there is hatred for corporations that refuse to accept union demands for control. And if the truth be known, why unions are losing membership as well certification.

Look no further then Wisconsin for answers to find how the real union agenda has failed the membership with it's self serving symbiotic relationship with democrats.

Union-Funded Study Understates Public Pension Costs
Source: Andrew G. Biggs, "Crony Capitalism vs. Public Pensions," The American, February 1, 2014.

February 10, 2014

A new union-funded study understates the costs of public employee pensions while overstating the costs of corporate welfare, says Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

• Good Jobs First has released a new study, sponsored by unions, that claims that corporate welfare payments from states to businesses far outweigh public employee pension costs.
• Biggs contends that corporate welfare, or crony capitalism, should be cut entirely, reasoning that cronyism is no different from deals for public employee unions.
• But even so, the Good Jobs First report exaggerates these costs in order to claim that public pension costs pale in comparison.

The cost of a pension is a combination of "normal cost" (the contribution that a government makes to a pension fund that year) and "amortization costs" (payment for unfunded liabilities that have accrued).

• The union-funded study did not count these latter costs, factoring in only the "normal cost" of pensions.
• This was no mistake, and it is also not insignificant.
• In Arizona, for example, the cost of the pension -- including amortization costs -- is 1.6 times more expensive than the "normal cost" by itself.

In all, the Good Jobs First study underestimated the cost of pensions by two-thirds.
As for corporate subsidies, Biggs agrees that the costs of such corporate welfare outweigh the benefits and should be eliminated. Even so, the study wrongly assumed that there were zero benefits whatsoever to these subsidies in order to increase the total cost.

It says a great deal about the high cost of public employee pension plans that the study went to such lengths to mask the cost of pensions and overstate the cost of subsidies.