There's nothing more motivating than being broke--at least when it comes to getting state governments to turn their attention to political hot potatoes if it means saving a few bucks. This month the cash-strapped Pennsylvania School Employees' Retirement System Board doubled the mandatory contribution that the state and its approximately 500 school districts together must pay into the state's teacher pension system, from 4.78 to 8.22 percent--with plans to keep increasing the rate over the next five years. It's a move murmured about all over the country, as states look to find ways to reduce their significant liabilities in tough economic times.

Over the next five years, Pennsylvania and its districts will be asked to contribute 34 percent of their teachers' salaries, representing a 600 percent rate increase over this period.

Earlier this decade, the Keystone state had been charging districts ZERO, all while the legislature happily continued to sweeten the pension plan, making it among the cushiest available to teachers in the nation. To pay for it all, the Pennsylvania-based Commonwealth Foundation estimates that homeowners will be facing property tax increases of an average of $800 per homeowner as soon as 2012, and should expect to keep seeing big increases thereafter.

Next year's increase will move the contribution required of the states' local school districts from among the lowest of all states right up to the middle of the pack. However, the planned future increases will send the state off the chart, especially considering that the districts in Pennsylvania must also contribute to Social Security on teachers' behalf, which is not done by districts in most states with high contribution rates.

Maybe we're all just jealous? Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky think we shouldn't be. In the current issue of Education Next, they write that not only are these plans unfair to non-teacher taxpayers, but they aren't such a great deal for some teachers, at least those who don't intend to stick with the same district for 30 years. In Golden Handcuffs, they write that pensions have many perverse incentives, with more transient teachers losing over 50 percent of their pension wealth if they move from one pension system to another (usually state to state, but sometimes just from the surrounding suburban counties to the city).