Inflation and retirement

tom1944
Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:07:07 +0000

NJ is considered one of the States with the most dire finances. Total budget $30 billion. I am rounding. Operating budget plus debt payments $7 billion. Income tax collections $11 billion. Since the income tax is constitutionally required to fund schools I take that off the table although you could make the case some of those funds could be used to make teachers pension payments. In this case I will not do that. That leaves $12 billion. This year the State was to make a $3 billion dollar pension payment after missing 90% of their payments over the last 17 years. That leaves $9 billion of discretionary funds to allocate. Far from bankrupt.

Also the State is free to make cuts to the operating budget if they wanted.