I don't think they're going to fix the pension problem until there actually is a recession

and then everyone's going to be running around the capital and oh my god we didn't see this

coming it's the perfect storm yeah there's so many perfect storms. No, it's a

storm that you've seen coming for a decade. I remember when San Diego was hiring

firefighters and they had to open an arena because there were so many applicants.

At one point there were like 22,000 applicants for every firefighter job.

That might be a suggestion that the compensation is out of whack.

I mean, just look at it for yourself.

And that's why we have a pension problem in California,

because we're paying public employees based on their political power

and the deals they're able to get at the local level and in the state capital. Mike Green, I'm here in Sacramento, California for Real Vision. I'm really excited to sit down with Stephen Green Hut.

Steve, you and I met for the first time about 10 years ago in the aftermath of the global

financial crisis in New York City. You came to the Manhattan

Institute to speak about a book that you had written called

Plunder. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about

plunder, what it was about.

Sure, I call it the subtly titled book, Plunder.

It's about public employee unions.

And it's based on my reporting when I was at the Orange County Register

and covering the 34 cities that are in the county.

And I was looking at their finances, looking at local politics, looking at the pension crisis that was starting to evolve.

And the main takeaway that I had through my reporting was the outsized power of

...