This is how it will begin.
Taxpayers in Idaho, a state that pays very low middle class or working class wages to public workers, will be asked to bail out the cadillac pensions of public and private workers in high tax and spend states.
This is not what America is about.
Teachers who make 45k a year should not be asked to bail out teachers who used a union and jacked up the pay for the same task to 90k or more. This is true for autoworkers, police, fire, utility workers, etc etc.
Every American has the right to pick and choose a job based not only on their own pay and benefits, but on the sustainability of their expected retirement. I should NOT have to bail out an entity that paid firefighters 200k a year with overtime that counted towards their retirement benefits!
This is going to be a huge problem for our nation moving forward in addition to the crushing government debt at all levels. The private sector is in the same bad shape as government is within many sectors and Americans do not see the hidden cost in utility rates, the cost of cars, the cost of healthcare, and the list goes on.
We all want a good retirement. I think most of us also want to leave a financially viable and sustainable world for our children. We have a debt problem and when you add our pension debt problem to that (to include social security) we are in very bad trouble.
So the firemen just walk away from the fire at the end of the shift? Lord you folks never think. I think you live in some fantasy land where nothing bad ever happens.
Your point about counting overtime pay for pensions is an excellent one.
Here is something college professors have been doing for years. Many of their defined benefit pensions work something like this: your pensions is based on the average of your three final years of salary times 2% time the number of years you work.
So you work 30 years for 27 of those years you work 8 months or so a year (two four month semesters). Your final three years you become a department chair or associate dean. Your salary goes up in the form of a raise but more importantly, you are now given a 12 month contract instead of an eight month contract. So a full professor is making $100,000 for eight months. The promotion increases his or her salary to $100,000x12/8 to $150,000 and then increased to say $160,000 for the new job.
Old pension: $100,000x2%x30 = $60,000 ($90,000 if 3%)
New pension: $160,000x2%x30 = $96,000 ($144,000 if 3%)
And that does not count Social Security benefits!
I hope the Pension Guaranty board isn't going belly up because my husband depends on that pittance for his retirement, after the govt allowed a crony capitalist to bankrupt company, throwing all the workers out, losing benefits and pensions...