This book is a real eye opener. Pension Ponzi illustrates how Canada has become plagued with an enormous, bloated, militant public "service", which is most concerned with using extortion tactics to serve themselves. They're organized, they're well financed (with our tax dollars) and they're greedy and motivated. As such they have a lot of sway over our elections and our expenditure policies, and they have no qualms about living high on the hog today at the expense of the next generation.
This book cites countless empirical sources that clearly illustrate why we are having a global debt crisis: because public sector unions are collectively bargaining the industrialized world into bankruptcy. When you consider that approximately 80% of budgets go to salaries and pensions, and that massive deficits are now the norm everywhere, this is pretty hard to dispute.
Pension Ponzi illustrates the vast discrepancy in pay scales that have emerged between the private and public sectors:
"Current data shows public sector wages and benefits are about 40% MORE than they are for equivalent jobs in the private sector....Other benefits are so generous that the phrase, "Come for the maternity leave, stay for the pension" is jokingly used as a recruiting slogan...The joke, of course, is on private-sector taxpayers"
Pension Ponzi illustrates the vast discrepancy in pensions: "The average CPP benefit payment is $5,919 per year. The average annual pension for a new OTPP retiree is around $42,900 per year"
Pension Ponzi illustrates the vast discrepancy in preferential payouts:
"While the rest of Canada's taxpayers must wait until at least age 60 to receive a reduced pension from CPP and age 65 for a full pension, government employees begin receiving CPP immediately upon retirement. This CPP equivalent is known as a bridge benefit because it 'bridges' the time from early retirement until age 65. This benefit is topped up from the employee pension fund to make the full pension amount. The bridge benefit stops when the employee becomes entitled to CPP benefits. This effectively gives the public servant CPP from the first day of retirement"
For anyone who, like Ontario finance minister Duncan, just shrugs and claims our debt is perfectly manageable, a good hard look at this book may be in order. Greece is what happens when you keep tripling the Sunshine List as Ontario is doing, and doubling it as the Feds are doing.
For anyone sick of being a private sector serf, lorded over by the collective bargaining civic unions with their millionaire pensions, this book will get you educated real fast:
"To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous." New York Supreme Court, 1943
Reading Pension Ponzi may make you somewhat angry if you are a private sector taxpayer, but it will certainly open your eyes. You will also find it interesting to see the "global debt crisis" headlines validating the book's message every day...
