The Washington Post has an extraordinarily cavalier attitude toward commitments to workers. Today it has an article in which it reports on the status of public pension funds. At one point it quotes a researcher at the Pew Center on the States as saying that defaulting on the pension funds would make public officials feel "like you are breaking a contractual promise." Defaulting on pension obligations to workers certainly should make public officials feel like they are breaking contractual obligations, because that is exactly what they would be doing. These workers worked for their pay and their pensions. While the Post implies that meeting these obligations is a matter of choice for public officials, (earlier the article asserts that fund managers will "have to choose whether to continue paying out or renege on benefits promised to retirees") in reality, they have little choice except declaring bankruptcy. If governments do not meet their legal obligations to retired workers, then the workers will be able to go to court and seize public assets such as the city halls, police and fire stations and schoosl. They will be able to sell off this property to collect the benefits owed them by the governments.
--Dean Baker
