Posted on 04/26/2010 11:22:36 AM PDT by bs9021
Bad News for Teachers
Malcolm A. Kline, April 26, 2010
Unfortunately for public school teachers, it looks like the people in charge of giving us the New Math may have been applying some of that product to the pension funds for educators in government schools.
The Foundation for Educational Choice and the Manhattan Institute found that:
* “All fifty-nine pension funds studied face shortfalls;
* “California, the most populous state, has the largest unfunded teacher pension liability: almost $100 billion;
* “The worst-funded plan in our sample is West Virginia’s, which we estimate to be only 31 percent funded;
* “Five plans are 75 percent funded or better: teacher-dedicated plans in the District of Columbia, New York State and Washington State and state employee retirement systems in North Carolina and Tennessee that include teachers;
* “Total unfunded liabilities to teachers—i.e., the gap between existing plan assets and the present value of benefits accrued by plan participants—are $332 billion;...
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
Worse news for taxpayers, who pay most of the costs of these rich pension benefits.
Does this apply to teacher across the country? What about those who are considering going into the profession within 5 years?
I would not bank on there being a country in 5 years.
“I would not bank on there being a country in 5 years.”
Great...
In Mrs. Mugwump’s case not really. Over the last 20 years she has paid approximately $110,000 from her earnings to the state retirement system.
The district she works for may match that, but I don’t know for sure. (Half in this case is “most” minus one percent. :)
Her pension will amount to a little less than one third of her gross salary for this year. We don’t expect that she’ll collect a fraction of her own contribution before the state says “sorry, we don’t have the money anymore. No more pension.”
Aren’t Ponzi schemes grand. I remember arguing with a liberal last year about how much better Defined Contribution plans were to Defined Benefit. They could not get past the promise of future benefits being rock solid sure. Personally I like having my name on the money, and, when I go to retire, I can price my own annuity with part of the account.
Unfortunately there are enough of these folks to dip into the taxpayers pockets (too big a voting block). I wait for the day when inflation indexed pensions meet monetized debt. It appears to be a positive feedback loop to me (Federal pensions, many state pensions like CALPERS, and Social Security).
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