The pension crisis has been a conveniently ignored time bomb in New Jersey, but now we are about to light the fuse. A legislative committee just approved a ballot referendum to constitutionally mandate extra spending of over $3 billion now and $6
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Former New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch pulled together a bipartisan group of statesmen to issue a stark warning about the finances of many state governments around the country. New Jersey did not fare well. Many have not taken the warnings seriously,
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I have had a depressingly high number of conversations lately about New Jersey being a sinking ship. There are three themes. The most common is that the state is financially broke and that nobody seems to have the political will to fix
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Let’s play a TV game show. What would you rather have: $600 cash or a 30% chance of getting $1000? The latter has an expected value of only $300. In this example, better to go with something more certain. What follows is
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Sometimes numbers get so big that eyes just blur. Let’s try to put the state’s $58 billion health care liability for public employees in perspective. This $58 billion is the estimated present value of all post-retirement health-care benefits for state, local, and
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