The point I was attempting to make was my roads & bridges were not being fixed due to necessary funds being diverted into under funded pension funds .
When a one party run area makes the rules for decades every citizen loses . The unions always get what they want in exchange for their votes .
Thus The Teachers Union is able to hire and keep their salaries high thus showing other city unions how to do the same . Promises were made to fund all the pension funds at high rates , but when the economy falls problems arise .
The City of Chicago was an example used as having a problem with elected officials making promises that they knew would have to be handle with long after they had died .
Many major cities and even our own pension funds are in this same danger .
Promises made years ago are no long valid in a falling economy .
The Federal Gov't has set standards on which pension funds are at critical stages which might cause payment amounts in the near future to be decreased .
When the cities reach this critical stage , the elected officials will not be able to lessen the salaries without losing their own power to maintain office so other city services will suffer .
a pension is an employers promise to pay future wages in exchange for present wages. so the employees are owed. but corporations and government quite often mismanage their employees pensions.
where im from teachers unions are the most organized and they certainly dont always get what they want. teachers unions are good they actually strike. the only problem is they dont push for more rights like 5 weeks vacation, affordable or free college, etc.
the reason you have cracks in the road is political. it is not because america is a poor country. the country is awash in wealth, but it is simply not distributed in the first place correctly (it goes to the 0.1% or whatever), and it is not redistributed through taxes correctly.
on top of that the federal government spends 50% of its budget on military empire.
regarding social security, the government has spent alot of the savings for it to keep the debt down or whatever. social security has a regressive tax: so after roughly 120k you pay a smaller and smaller percentage the richer you are. they could easily change this and then social security would be paid until 2075 or something. and i think social security should be expanded, i heard its quite a small amount when you retire. its one of the best programs out there and its government run, so of course wall st is trying to privatize it.