most of the time, you will find, like scranton, obligations to retirees, obtained by unions, cause this. scranton has to pay $15million per year to cover retiree healthcare alone, not to count all of the retirement and other benefits as well. same way with general motors, they pay out so much money to people who no longer work, they are doomed. these contracts were put on these entities by unions who said we want it or will strike, they caved and now they are caving. what wisconsin did earlier, was to save themselves from the same fate. town, cities, states are in the same position, they cannot afford the liabilities they have on their shoulders. if you looked at the unfunded liabilities that our fed govt has, you would move to cuba, unreal, and this is on top of the actual debt you see on tv. the govt will not allow a corporation to be in business if they don't fund, in some manner, their future liabilities but they just go merrily along funding nothing but adding to the huge number already there every day. go to the "debt clock" and just look at every category and watch the numbers fly and just tell me, does not matter if you majored in philosophy, journalism, english, if you think we can just talk our way out of this. something has to happen, not sustainable just by printing money and even if the economy turns, we get more people working, paying taxes, won't dent what we owe. we have to change this or the fed will be greece, spain, italy, ireland, scranton, san bernadino.