I am not sure you can accurately compare without everything that goes into these decisions. A few California cities have been downgraded, but the entire state of California has not. Perhaps they look at it micro and not macro.

It's almost always used as a kind of hit piece that relies crucially on double-standards, something that's absurdly easy to do by accident when the standards are so complex to begin with.

Take the USPS. We defend it. But this is the kind of analysis used to impose the draconian pre-funding of retirement benefits that's killing the USPS budget.

Making matters even worse is that when it comes to valuing funds dedicated to pensions versus unfunded pension obligations things can get screwy. How do you value what's currently held in trust? How do you estimate benefits that will be paid? What inflation numbers do you use? How do you gauge any capital gains? Do you include everybody that's currently enrolled and assume they'll have "average" lifespans? Higher-than-average lifespans? What do you do with people that would be hired next year? Do you just fix a 20- or 30-year time limit on it--with all the arbitrariness that includes?

Your answers to those questions are (1) determinative of the outcome and (2) fairly arbitrary. Esp. when it comes to political creatures like states and cities. The USPS calculations are fairly arbitrary, but it's not got tax revenues behind it so it has to be judged less like a public service and more like a private entity (so the reasoning goes).

Even the terms in the OP are sort of weighted. TX is "middle of the pack," at $13-14k/person. But California's at $65k/person. It's "middle of the pack" at 39th by GDP.

What's worse is that Texas does municipal bond issues differently than a lot of states. In states I've lived in before cities could float bond proposals by themselves. They were in some sense sovereign. In Texas, the state has to approve bonds because the cities and counties *cannot* sponsor a bond issue--although they're first in line for making payments, the debt gets credited to the state because the state is on the hook in case of default (take that, Detroit). So when Houston passed a $2.7 billion bond issue for school improvements, drainage, comm. college improvements, etc., based on what Houston said Houston could afford, that gets credited as Texas state debt. (Texas is, in some ways, run more like a small country--one with a very centralized government.)

think public employees know, they might get diddly.

this is an attempt by investors salivating to crack open our pension retirement funds in Texas. Our funds are over 80+% funded currently-a damn site more than many others. In other words, we have money and investments set aside to cover these 'debts'. Illinois pension funds has not been as well funded and basically sucked dry by their corrupt politicians. The Arnold Foundation (they invaded Ca. pension)and others tried during the last session to open our pension fund and failed.

This is another attempt to sway public opinion against all us overpaid teachers. Our funds are well manager and the envy of many investment firms. Many districts here don't pay into Social Security (like the Rail Road Pension) so opening them up after the fact would be devastating.

Moody is not playing fav's on this one and we are fighting hard to keep crooks hands out of our cookie jar.

http://www.pewstates.org/research/reports/the-widening-gap-update-85899398241?p=3

Pensioners in Texas have not gotten a raise in 10 years. With this last session, the state will increase it's contribution (the main reason it has fallen behind) and the folks working now will increase the amount they pay. As long as these investors don't get in and churn the funds we are OK.

Health care is problematic but once folks qualify for Medicare and the new health care laws, things may change. Besides, how many 401's offer any health care?