Public pensions unfair to taxpayers

We’ve read the reports about the egregious actions of some union leaders and other administrators ripping off Illinois taxpayers with their pension shenanigans. Now I’d like someone to tell me, what will be the aftermath of all these actions that have been exposed? Will they be forced to give the money back? Why is it always cut in stone that public employee pensions are not immutable, but the private sector pensions can be adjusted or eliminated with relative impunity?

And it doesn’t stop there. Pensions received in the private sector never rise. This is not the case with taxpayer-funded pensions. The yearly raise is also written in stone from everything I’ve read. Social Security was not raised for two years. Did the public pensions suffer the same fate?

How often in the past did the union leaders justify their requests to match the private sector in wages, telling the taxpayers it was the only fair thing to do? So why are these union leaders not now lowering these same wages and benefits to match the private sector decreases as the only fair thing to do?

What they don’t realize is that when a large percentage of the private sector were in good-paying manufacturing jobs, their wages could absorb the cost of all this largesse flowing to the public sector, by raising the taxes to cover it, but as everyone except the public union employee now realizes, that is no longer the case. All those good private sector jobs have gone out of Illinois and America. Which means you’re asking the now $8-an-hour guy to pay for a $16-an-hour union guy, and it can’t be done, without unsettling consequences.

Thank goodness for the farsighted, good union members of Cary Elementary District 26. Now if they all could see the light.

Rosemary Colbert

Schaumburg