This is longtime Cato Daily podcast host Caleb Brown.

I've hosted the Cato Daily podcast for nearly 18 years, but no more.

But I wanted to leave loyal listeners with some favorite episodes that I hope ring true and relevant to our current moment.

This is one of them.

Thank you for listening.

This is the Cato Daily podcast for Friday, October 7, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

State pensions continue to threaten state budgets and have come to threaten even the provision of basic local services.

The fear for many state governments, sadly, is that the true severity of the problem will eventually be revealed.

Peter Constan is a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation and his

executive director of the Retirement Security Initiative. We spoke last week. If you had to pick

one problem in state pensions, and of course there are many, but if there is the keystone

of the pension problem in the United States, in states,

what would you say it is?

Denial.

Denial.

And what enables that denial?

You know, as you look at pension boards as they're making decisions or even legislators

as they're making decisions related even legislators as they're making decisions

related to pensions. You know, they have this big vehicle, so to speak, and they're driving

it all by looking in the rearview mirror. And there's this continual feeling that this is

just a little anomaly. It's going to work its way out. Look backwards. Look at all the things

that where we had problems and they fixed themselves. So it just needs time.

...