There are legitimate criticisms I find of teachers unions, but then there are regular examples of foolish, illogical digs. In the And your mortgage is probably more than what you earn in any year category:
Recently Mike Antonucci tried to gin up a story based on the fact that pensions are liabilities, forgetting that long-term liabilities are by definition long-term, and the one case he could point to of a state affiliate budget crisis was by definition short-term. By the standard he set (a debt that's of the same order of magnitude as annual revenues), anyone with any kind of mortgage that isn't going to be paid off in a year is being horribly profligate, because most homeowners owe more on their house than they earn in a year. And that's without the mortgages being underwater.
In the So you're in favor of universal disclosure? category:
Also recently, Fordham's Chris Irvine tries to take a flying (or Flypaper) dig at various NEA expenditures, forgetting that the reason why he has access to this information is that union expenditures are reported publicly. Does Fordham report all of its staff salaries? What is the position of Fordham (or the anti-union source of the information) on disclosure of corporate campaign contributions? Hmmn…
The difference between mortgages and pension liabilities is:
1) A mortgage is a one-time debt that you then work towards paying off, while
2) Pension liabilities have arisen because pensions have systematically overpromised benefits, assessed contributions that were too low, and overestimated their investment growth. Sure, we don’t have to pay liabilities off in one year. But the current situation is as if you took out a mortgage, and then rather than making payments, you just took out a home equity loan every year and increased the size of the mortgage. Not smart.