Ponies For Everyone

October 28, 2010

Is it wrong to promise a child a pony to get her to calm down before surgery? An anesthesiologist posed this question to The New York Times’ Randy Cohen in a recent installment of Cohen’s column “The Ethicist.” Cohen responded that, unless the anesthesiologist had a stable full of ponies he was ready to part with, it was indeed wrong to make such empty promises. The same lesson applies to …

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Ignore Those Numbers Behind The Curtain

March 8, 2010

Last week, Larry Elkin commented here about the report by the Pew Center on the States that revealed a $1 trillion funding gap between what states have promised in retirement benefits to public employees and what they have actually set aside to meet those obligations. The report made it clear that the situation is bad, but I believe this situation is actually even worse. When states calculate the portion of …

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The $1 Trillion Empty Promise

March 2, 2010

Employees of state and local governments across America labor for (usually) fairly modest salaries, but they have the security of knowing that their employers guarantee them generous pension, health care and other retirement benefits. They ought to feel quite a bit less secure. A recent report by The Pew Center on the States found a $1 trillion gap between what states have promised and what they have actually set aside …

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