“We put our money in,” said Walter Trembley, a 74-year-old retired police officer who drove to the meeting from his home in Lake Worth, Fla. “And the city, through their callousness and everything else, just blew it.”
No one anywhere funds their own pensions. A retiree usually gets far more from a pension than what they contributed. This city is just a preview of what will happen to Social Security and Medicare. Sure, people are pissed. They were promised rainbows and unicorn farts.
Many civil servants do in fact fund their own pensions, but only partially.
For example, a worker might contribute 6% of his weekly check to the pension fund, and the city might contribute another 6%. These are forced contributions, and are based on how the fund was set up.
I'm not saying that every civil servant fund is set up that way, but many are.