West Virginia is starting to figure out how much the practice of letting public employees trade in unused sick leave time is going to cost them.
Kentucky public workers can cash out unused sick and vacation time when they leave their jobs. Adding this to the unfunded liability we have already calculated will not bring good news. If Frankfort lawmakers think they have trouble balancing the budget now, they will really have their work cut out for them when they get serious about paying for these future benefits. Better get to it quickly. And borrowing the money isn't a sustainable strategy. Spending less on government is the only feasible approach.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
West Virginia does some benefits math
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2 comments:
I have never really understood why there needs to be different classifications of time off. At our firm we have two kinds of time off--"paid" and "unpaid."
You wrote: "Spending less on government is the only feasible approach."
That's just some more of your feudalistic nonsense coupled with your drive to further centralize the economy.
It would be far more economical and beneficial to get the Kentucky federal legislative delegates to introduce legislation to legalize all things hemp.
The 1998 University of Kentucky study entitled, Economic Impact of Industrial Hemp in Kentucky reported:
If just one-fourth of Kentucky’s 90 agricultural counties went into industrial hemp business, approximately 17,348 jobs would be created and $396 million in worker earnings generated a year.Hemp can be grown in all Kentucky counties. Its geography and climate are conducive to that.
If Kentucky universities could grow, research, test and market hemp products this would create additional revenue.
Universities could grow medical and recreational cannabis hemp, and market those products.
Since cannabinoids of the hemp plant are a naturally occurring substance, pharmaceutical drug companies can't patent it, so they aren't interested.
However, there's sufficient evidence from foreign universities that at least two cannabinoids THC (marijuana) and CBD, have anti-cancer properties as well as the capability to treat other serious disease such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and MS. It's also an effective paid reliever without the serious kidney and liver side effects of ibuprofen and Tylenol.
Hemp-cannabis products, grown, researched, tested, manufactured in Kentucky and marketed worldwide would be a financial bonanza for Kentucky. It would also add a dimension of decentralization of our economic system—a concept that's anathema to Republicans and conservatives.
Government exists to meet the needs of the people. It doesn't need to be downsized. Government is not the problem. It's the absence of good government that's the problem.
You're preaching your feudalistic, Republican, conservative economics again, which is a prescription for failure, economic downturn, and job and wage losses. Voodoo, smoke-and-mirrors Reaganomics doesn't work.
You're still harping on behalf of the lord of the manor to be free to work economic hardship on the serfs.
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