New Jersey has unfunded pension liabilities of $90 billion, and a bipartisan commission recently recommended scaling back the health coverage and shifting many public employees to a hybrid pension plan in order to keep benefit costs at 15 percent of the annual budget. But that’s very unlikely given the current makeup of the state’s governing bodies. At the current trend, those costs will reach $10.7 billion in 2023, more than a quarter of the state budget.
So, if high state and local taxes are giving you the urge to move, pack your bags and call the movers sooner rather than later.
A. Gary Shilling is president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., a New Jersey consultancy, and author of “The Age of Deleveraging: Investment Strategies for a Decade of Slow Growth and Deflation.” Some portfolios he manages invest in currencies and commodities.