Opinion

Progressives vs. pensions

Progressives style themselves as people who look to the future. After all, that’s the whole idea behind the word “progress.”

But progressive dreams are smacking up against a hard reality: public-sector unions.

At some point in the movement, progressives made these public workers their priority — over the public whom they are supposed to serve.

That choice is now coming back to haunt them, because the unsustainable promises made to these government workers are increasingly robbing politicians of the money they need to finance their progressive ambitions.

Progressive-in-chief Bill de Blasio is running into this problem here at home. The latest figures from New York City’s five largest pension funds put the challenge in stark relief.

Even as city taxpayers are seeing more and more of their dollars going to pay for these pensions — pensions have gone from just 2 percent of the city budget in 2000 to 11 percent today— they remain dangerously underfunded.

The New York Times likens the situation to a bathtub draining faster than the faucet is filling it.

In one sentence, it sums up de Blasio’s problem: “Instead of getting smaller, the city’s pension hole just keeps getting bigger, forcing progressively more significant cutbacks in municipal programs and services every year.”

That last line is the kicker: forcing progressively more significant cutbacks in municipal programs and services every year.

This isn’t a big problem for those who believe the city government does too much and does it badly.

But it is a mortal threat for progressives such as Mayor de Blasio, whose agenda depends almost entirely on spending more money to introduce or expanding the city’s programs.

Recently, city Comptroller Scott Stringer happily announced that the investment strategy for the city’s pension funds had managed to pull off a 17.4 percent increase this year.

That’s terrific news. But one reason we have arrived at this dismal place is because those running these funds time and again have assumed high rates of return would remain constant. Truth is, they won’t.

Here’s where that leaves us: Our mayor believes he is writing a new progressive future for New York City, with bold new programs, such as universal pre-K.

But the hard reality is this:

As the costs of promises made to the city’s workers continue to increase faster than the city’s ability to pay for them, progressives are going to find themselves presiding over a system trying desperately paying more and more for the past — at the expense of funding the ­future.