You're combining work permits with citizenship. They're vastly different. Do you want neither to be a requirement? How ethical is it to allow someone to work in a country where they have zero civic participation in its government? Or do you immediately get participation rights because you work for a company based in XYZ? Then you vote for things that affect the future, you move, and you're no longer affected by the votes you put in. Where do your loyalties lie?
A lot of municipal debt is a result of people who voted for things that affected the future and then left. It's not just a hypothetical problem.
(Basically, pensions. They were offered to make municipal employment more attractive, which made the cities nicer places to live. They were not totally funded at the time the services were provided, even though the benefits of offering the pensions were largely consumed at that time.)
There's no point in having municipal bonds in the first place. The federal government can borrow at zero percent to bomb little brown children or subsidize wall street bonuses. Flint can't borrow at zero percent to pay teachers or fix its water mains.
What confuses me is why people like you are personally are more concerned with cutting teacher pensions than cutting war budgets when it's fairly plain which one we actually want more (assuming you don't want to live in a country full of dumb people that is...).
I'm in favor of fully funding them at the time of employment.
I guess I would agree that fully funded pensions might not be as large as promised pensions, but it's not like promised pensions have a perfect record of getting delivered.
Fully funded meaning what? Handing over the money to Wall Street and trusting that they can grow it by 2% a year? 5% a year? -5% a year?
There's no real reason why pensions have to be used to pump up stock market prices. Social Security can simply be expanded, cutting out the million dollar bonuses and ferraris from the process.
Yes, the core thing that I have a problem with is funding services on promises that are expected to be met at the local level. How to manage future compensation otherwise is a serious problem, but it's a better problem than funding services with promises.
I agree that a national benefit program is not as fraught as a local one.
I don't see where I mention citizenship. I'm just saying there shouldn't be a restriction on who someone can work for. For instance it's unreasonable that a French guy can just come to the UK and work, but a Brazilian needs to jump through hoops.
As for whether someone can vote, that's a different story. You still have your basic rights such as the right to a fair trial. But the freedom to work shouldn't be restricted.
