Building on today’s (apparent) theme of government profligacy, here’s another article from National Review detailing the disconnect between government pay and the overall economy. In his article Kent Osband lays out a statistical case against government employee pay and benefits. In a passage that caught ‘Puter’s attention, as it involved ‘Puter’s adopted home state of New York, Mr. Osband writes:

Recently, the GAO estimated that unfunded retirement benefits for state and local employees exceed $530 billion. Top dishonors go to New York State, whose government, largest city, and largest counties underfund pensions by at least $119 billion. Authorities in California underfund by at least $91 billion. New Jersey underfunds by at least $51 billion. Together these three account for nearly half of all underfunding. Illinois is almost surely fourth, but Cook County refused to report its liabilities. Special mentions go to Detroit and Boston, which despite their moderate size have racked up unfunded liabilities of roughly $6 billion apiece.

In sum, there are 19,490,297 New Yorkers as of 2008. As Mr. Osband writes, New York’s unfunded pension liabilities are $119,000,000,000.00. That, according to ‘Puter’s limited math skills comes to $6,105.60 per New Yorker to cover the unfunded portion of public workers’ pensions only. That figure does not cover the billions of dollars previously paid out of hard -earned wages to cover public workers’ overly-generous (insanely early) retirements. Nor does it take into account the diminishing number of New Yorkers who actually pay any tax at all.

Imagine the darkness that must live within the hearts of the legislators (in New York and elsewhere) who have mortgaged, and continue to mortgage, future generations’ prosperity in order that they may buy the votes of today’s unionized government employees.

Read the whole thing, and be aghast at the manifest disparity between the ants (private sector workers who produce wealth) and grasshoppers (the public sector who eats wealth).

*Mistah Hobbes, he dead.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.