News Story of the Day: Minnesota’s state pension debt is in a crisis right now. In fact, it’s crisis is coming with a $33.4 billion price-tag, or $6,000 for each Minnesota resident.
According to Bloomberg, the state has just 53 percent of what it needs to cover benefits for government workers and retirees, which is down from 80 percent last year. Because of this, Minnesota’s retirement system is now the seventh-worst in the country.
Get this:
“The Minnesota’s teachers’ pension fund, which had $19.4 billion in assets as of June 30, 2016, is expected to go broke in 2052. As a result of the latest rules the pension has started using a rate of 4.7 percent to discount its liabilities, down from the 8 percent used previously. As a result, its liabilities increased by $16.7 billion.”
Susan Lenczewski, executive director of the state’s Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement, said this: “It’s a crisis.”
This is a compounding problem that has been largely ignored by Republicans and Democrats.
Chart of the Day: when the photograph camera was first invented, it would be expensive and timely to snap just one picture. As the years progressed, and the camera became more intricate, it was a lot cheaper and faster to take pictures. Today, you can take as many photos as you want with your smartphone or digital camera without the hassle of waiting to see if it was blurry or if there was a finger in front of the lens. The market provides true progress. This year, more than one trillion photos will be taken:
Illustration of the Day: the media’s coverage of Hurricane Harvey has been questionable. CNN spent most of Friday night opining on Joe Arpaio’s pardon, Politico mused on Melania Trump’s footwear and the rest of the media talked about President Donald Trump’s so-called empathy problem. This cartoon sums it up:
Quote of the Day: in today’s world, all you see are protests and demonstrations, primarily consisting of activists screeching and shrieking about who knows what. It is popular today to protest against Nazis, white supremacy and the police – a few years ago, it was Wall Street. But why do they protest? Here is legendary economist Thomas Sowell explaining why:
“For lagging groups with a short time horizon, political activities such as rallies, marches and demonstrations offer instant gratification through emotional expression and solidarity with like-minded people, as well as posing issues in terms of a righteous crusade against presumed enemies responsible for the lags of one’s group. By contrast, putting time and energies into the acquisition of education and/or work skills, and developing self-discipline, can mean a far longer and more lonely process of unromantic drudgery, with no such immediate gratification as solidarity with others voicing opposition to presumed enemies. Moreover, this alternative to political activity can produce a painful sense of one’s own current inadequacies, even if due to circumstances beyond one’s control.”
Tweet of the Day: how many people have ever fled free markets? The answer is no one.
No person ever evades gunfire, swims through oceans, or flees free market capitalism. They flee socialism.
People want to be free
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) 31 August 2017
Video of the Day: wow! How rare is it to see a political leader donate some of his own money to help a cause? They usually just say more government funding is necessary to help others. Well, President Donald Trump is donating $1 million of his own money to the relief efforts of Hurricane Harvey.
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