At the Huffington Post ^[1] I write about the news that Rick Perry is currently collecting both a salary and a pension from the taxpayers, and about a worse pension claim by a former Maryland governor. But I note that the real problem for taxpayers is not a few governors’ pensions but rather unfunded liabilities in the trillions facing state and local governments. And I suggest why legislators let pensions get so out-of-control:

Why do pensions get so lavish? A 2009 study ^[2] by the Cato Institute argued that in negotiations between elected officials and government unions, nobody really represents the taxpayers. Elected officials are far more responsive to organized interests like unions than to the unorganized citizen-taxpayers. In effect, the principal-agent problem that analysts of the corporation worry about is far worse in government because it is very difficult for taxpayers to control their theoretical agents, the elected officials and appointed managers of government.

Whole thing here ^[1].