Government pensions can't be discharged in bankruptcy[1], nor can PBGC[2] take them over. Some rust belt communities are seeing 25% of tax revenues [3] going to pay retired police and school teachers even as the towns dwindle and get bulldozed like Flint, MI. Because courts routinely treat the 14th amendment, section 4, to mean that such debts cannot possibly be made to go away, then taxes will have to be raised just to pay past promises.
3 - The state of NJ is currently spending about 9% of tax revenues to retirees in the form of pensions and health care. A reasonable rule of thumb is that if a growing community is spending less than 10% of their tax revenues on pensions, then they either don't have one, or they're dangerously underfunding their current pension plan.
Notes:
1 - Courts have routinely interpreted section 4 of the 14th Amendment to mean that governments cannot discharge debt in bankrupcties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...
2 - PBCG is to pensions what FDIC is to bank accounts. Pension administrators pay an annual premium that ends up covering the pension in the event that the company goes tits up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corpor...
3 - The state of NJ is currently spending about 9% of tax revenues to retirees in the form of pensions and health care. A reasonable rule of thumb is that if a growing community is spending less than 10% of their tax revenues on pensions, then they either don't have one, or they're dangerously underfunding their current pension plan.