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A Times Opinion piece has amazing advice for the future of pension funds:
Here’s how it would work. A city, county or state facing insurmountable pension costs would appeal to the Department of Treasury for relief. As a first step, it would have to adopt standard accounting practices to accurately portray its current and expected financial health, including realistic projections of its investment returns and the discount rates on its debt.
Sensible to this point but then it starts to go astray:
Second, the applicant would have to take action to assure it can meet the debt service on its bonds, including placing a permanent cap on its pension liabilities. This means raising the retirement age, increasing employee contributions and preventing employees from manipulating their salaries in the last years before retirement to increase their pensions; it would also mean restructuring the fund’s health-care spending, which has been a significant drain.
There's that hint of the pensioners being parasites here, with their "retirement" and salary manipulation and don't forget that health care spending.
But the last step in the coup de grace for me:
Finally, the fund would have to move all new employees to 401(k) retirement plans, which have fixed employer contributions and therefore reduce future taxpayer liabilities.
Because the market is perfect and never goes south, right? The "ownership society" has been so good to EVERYONE, isn't that right? I was visibly surprised (take my word on that, I guess!) that privatizing Social Security wasn't his fourth demand, frankly...
I found it especially funny to read this "advice" when I got to the bottom of the page and read this amazing tidbit of a co-author's experience to be giving such advice:
Alexander Rubalcava is the president of an investment advisory firm.
Amazing, right?
The market remains hungry and ever shall be, methinks.
I guess Mark Fiore got it right:
It's been easy for me to accept the fact of working until I die.
All the signs have been there.
The only constant needed was greed...
