We must end public pensions. Make all benefits payable now. Fund employee 401Ks or 403Bs, as generously as current funds may allow, leaving future taxpayers off the hook.
Cutting pensions of employees who have provided the labor they were contracted to provide is nothing more breach of contract and outright theft.
Is it theft when a private corporation goes bankrupt and can no longer pay a pension?
A person who truly believes in free market principles should stand with the employees on the issue of pensions.
I think these pensions should be converted into 401Ks.
Reducing pension benefits is no different than the state allowing a person to walk into a store, take an item to the cash register, hand the cashier partial payment, and walking out the door with no fear of prosecution.
And when the pensions have bankrupted the store?
I’ve tried to explain under funded liabilities and wishful thinking to my union inlaws ages age... waste of time. Results in rage borne of fear that I am right I suspect.
I must have been one of the first 22 year-old engineers that ever questioned the stability of Exxon’s pension funding. I thought the HR manager would fall out of his chair when I asked about rates of return, actuarial tables and pay-out calculations. At the time, 40 years ago, Exxon was the same as the federal government... up to 80% of the high-three compensation that my Dad had. It was based on working at least 30 years but not taking the pension until you were at least 60 or so... so that you didn’t live too long as a pensioner. I’d done the calculations as a project in my engineering economics and finance class... just for fun... by hand, no excel. Just me and my Ti-50A.
I’ve seen pension funds go broke and seen people who are lucky to get the pension fund trust minimum pension. It has happened many times in the past. It is going to happen many times in the future and it NEEDS to happen to government pensions.
Social Security is a promise. It is going to be cut and the promise broken. There isn’t enough money to fund the benefits. It has been mis-managed and stolen. Same thing needs to happen to public pensions. They have been mis-managed but they have also been over promised. Labor needs to take some equal responsibility for this. They trusted too much and understood too little.