[what's up]

Many Fed and State workers get in young, work their 20 years (not very long...many retire in their 50's) and are set for life with every benefit paid for, perhaps living another 30 to 40 years. You pointed out that private workers have more ups and downs. That's because they work in a competitive environment. The Gov't environment is funded by money not earned by competition but by electing the right bureaucrats who bilk from the taxpayer.

The disparity between retirees in the public and private sectors is going to cause tremendous problems in the future as the availability of private pensions decreases. These same private workers who are funding the Gov't workers who are set for life are eventually going to become very upset.

[Fee]

Actually the feds require you to be 55 years old before you can retire without penalty. Most people will work 30 plus years in order to support their kids thru college and retire in their early or mid 60’s with 35 to 40 years of service. That is the old system. The new system pegs 1/3 of their pension amount to Social Security and they cannot collect till they reach the SSA minimum age requirement. The people that do well are former military who transition to the fed system. Their military time counts towards their fed service time. Go in at the age of 17, after 20 years of mil service you are qualified for a pension (age 37 yo) join the fed with 20 years as a starting point, work another 20 years to get 40 years (max out on fed pension) retire at the age of 57 with mil and fed pension. Not bad assuming you are willing to risk the first 20 years in the mil with the possiblity of getting your butt shot at. Nothing ever comes free. Areas of abuse are loading the last three years with overtime to increase the pension amount the individual can collect for the rest of their life. Automatic COLA that do not reflect the state budgets and shortfalls. The fed COLA is linked to inflation (w/o food and fuel). Many state and local COLA are automatic based on the contracts the state signed and agreed to. Public is starting to notice these generous terms and wonder how the taxpayers are going to pay for it all. Many state pensions and healthcare funds are underfunded. Unlike the fed system, these state benefits are classified as contracts, which means the state either comes up with the money or declares bankruptcy. The feds consider their pension obligations no different from Social Security, they can change the terms on their workers any time (including defaulting on it). When employers (private and government) go broke they can do almost anything because they have nothing to lose.