Federal pensions were funded by higher than usual payments from the employees and were entirely solvent when the phase-out began under Reagan. Nor are they higher in payouts than many others. SS was never intended to be a pension so that is not a correct comparison.
The average federal pension six years ago was not quite $33,000 extrapolating from that it is on the order of $45,000 today in other words the same as the mean household income. The average retirement income for private sector employees was allegedly about $31,500 or around $42,000.
Those at the level of McCabe (I would estimate his would be on the order of $140-150,000 given his pay grade if he takes it as an individual w/o putting his wife on it.) There are only a few who have his pay-grade in the fed/gov. Highly placed private business men (at his pay-grade) often get much more as well as Golden Parachutes. Even if they ran the business into the ground.
I'm thinking the pay scale is more to what I meant. Yes, when people are getting excessively high pay scales, they end up with excessively high pensions.
Some people will say it is worth it to hire top quality people, but I see little evidence that we are getting "top quality people." Are we getting good value for the money we spend on these costly positions? Not so far as I can tell.
There are only a few who have his pay-grade in the fed/gov. Highly placed private business men (at his pay-grade) often get much more as well as Golden Parachutes. Even if they ran the business into the ground.
The difference is we can decide for ourselves voluntarily whether or not we want to contribute to businesses that pay insane levels of money for piss poor performance. (Like the NFL, to which I do not contribute anything) Not so with the Government.