The retirees were promised too much in many cases.
Low-information workers.
I’ll bet their pensions are pretty good no matter what this article states....any govt retiree with a defined pension has a huge gift on the backs of taxpayers and they must know that.....so no sympathy from me....
"Promised too much" hardly describes it.
Its more like the unions manipulated and blackmailed the politicians, while sticking it to the taxpayer to receive benefits that could never have been paid.
“If you like your retirement, you can keep your retirement. Period.”
Exactly. This is such a horrible situation. The Dems promised government workers rich, unaffordable pensions to buy their votes. The workers should have known better and saved more. But now that the Ponzi Scheme has fallen apart, these workers old and not in a position to work to earn the money they should have been saving. So they are screwed. Sure, its their own fault, but I don’t want to see them starving. It makes me so angry at the Democrats that they created this horrible situation to buy votes. They disgust me.
That’s true (employees promised too much), and bankruptcy is actually healthy. Detroit is finally getting a much needed wake up call that OPM (other people’s money) eventually runs out. Our nation is headed for a similar wake up call. We’ll all be millionaires of course, but what good is that when a million won’t buy dinner? Even the Ryan budget plan didn’t purport to balance the budget—much less spend down the debt—for something like a decade. Our leaders don’t know how to extricate our nation from Detroit-style overspending, and the end result will probably be worse.
Most people have defined contribution plans like a 401(K). Gov’t workers usually have a defined benefit plan, where they are guaranteed a certain amount of monthly benefits no matter how much was contributed, how the investments performed, or how long they live.
Those promises came in the form of
“let’s you and I negotiate against HIM (the taxpayer)”