The guiding principle here is that, as a rule of thumb, companies only pay full retirement benefits after 30 years of employment. 25 years ago the United States was going through utility "deregulation". The secondary energy industry had been a much larger segment of the American market until deregulation. As it turns out competition for employees before deregulation had driven retirement benefits to levels which were unaffordable under post-deregulation profits. With deregulation many secondary energy companies laid off large numbers of employees before they could attain full retirement. That all happened about 25 years ago. Doesn't it seem curious that...