MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED / OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS:

Legacy costs for pensions and health care create the major cost disadvantage for U.S. auto companies. But governments are far more imbedded with unfunded or underfunded pension and health care liabilities than any auto company. Minnesota teachers, as an example, are in retirement for an average of 27.4 years, nearly as long as some of them have worked. What should we say when the public-employee pension fund managers come clamoring to legislatures for more funds? Should we say, “Let them go bankrupt,” as some have suggested with our industrial companies?

You can’t bail out everybody, you know. We may have that forcefully illustrated, soon, as the political class seems unaware of these limits . . . .