What’s Illinois Good For?

Lest anyone think there is nothing good to say about Illinois, at least the state can serve as an object lesson. The San Diego Union warns:

So is California on track to eventually reach Illinois’ status? Officials in Sacramento aren’t nearly as fiscally suicidal as those in Springfield. As hard as it may be to believe, the budget the Illinois lawmakers seem ready to pass Thursday doesn’t include any pension reforms of note. But the changes that California has made in acknowledgment of shaky pension finances — most notably the 2012 pension reform measure Brown shepherded to passage — have achieved so little that in retrospect its primary purpose seems to have been to blunt the prospects of more sweeping reforms, such as those touted by former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed.

Meanwhile, California never even comes close to asking the fundamental question: In an era in which government pay is higher than in the private sector — even for jobs which only require high school graduation-level skills — how is it remotely fair that in the private sector, the most someone retiring at age 66 can get from Social Security is about $32,000 a year, while the average pension for a state worker with a 30-year career is more than double that amount — $68,000?

Isn’t this where the starting point for addressing extreme pension costs should be? In a rational world, of course. But not now in Illinois, and not now in California — and maybe never. Because when the people making pension decisions are the very government employees who stand to benefit from generous pensions, the rational thing to do is to take as much as you can.

So we’ve got that going for us anyway.