This is going to be an ongoing train wreck for several decades:
There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions.
Who should pay for the trillion-dollar pension gap?
The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide.
The have-nots are taxpayers who don’t have generous pensions. Their 401(k)s or individual retirement accounts have taken a real beating in recent years and are not guaranteed. And soon, many of those people will be paying higher taxes or getting fewer state services as their states put more money aside to cover those pension checks.
At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t,” as in titanic and terrifying.
***Mr. Justus, 62, who taught math for 29 years in the Denver public schools, says he thinks it could cost him half a million dollars if he lives another 30 years. He also notes that just about all state workers in Colorado do not (and cannot) pay into Social Security, so the pension is all retirees have to live on unless they have other savings.
No one disputes these figures. Instead, they apologize. “All I can say is that I am sorry,” said Brandon Shaffer, a Democrat, the president of the Colorado State Senate, who helped lead the bipartisan coalition that pushed through the changes. (He also had to break the news to his mom, a retired teacher.) “I am tremendously sympathetic. But as a steward of the public trust, this is what we had to do to preserve the retirement fund.”
I’m sympathetic to the budgetary issues, and I agree that there need to be changes to the pension guarantees for new and current employees, but I simply do not understand how you go back and change the contract you made with someone decades ago. Mr. Justus and those like him did what they were supposed to do- they agreed to work for a certain amount of money yearly with the understanding that they would have a decent pension upon retirement. They have no access to social security, they probably did not save in 401K’s or other programs because they knew they had a defined pension as well as the fact that they probably accepted less annual salary in exchange for the benefits they were promised and as such could not really build an independent nest egg.
And now, when the times are lean, lawmakers think they can just go and screw all the people who kept their side of the bargain. It’s just wrong.
And let there be no doubt that there will be a class war over this. Matt Welch and the glibertarian wingnut welfare recipients at Reason have been beating this drum for a while now.
SP
What are you talking about? I’m waiting for all the glibertarians to jump to the defense of schoolteachers and point out how the one proper role for government is the enforcement of contracts.
What? Why are you all laughing? Stop laughing!
r€nato
Some contracts are more equal than others.
Nicole
Sure hope those billionaires pledging to leave half of their money to charity give some of it to soup kitchens.
low-tech cyclist
As r€nato says, “some contracts are more equal than others.” We all remember how conservatives told us that it would be wrong for government to break AIG’s contracts with its employees, and deny them the seven-figure bonuses they were due.
But it’s perfectly OK with them to do that to teachers and other public employees.
Svensker
It’s going to be a mess. Right now we have cops in NJ making over $100K in small safe communities — their pensions are calculated on that salary, and they can retire with that pension way before age 65. Teachers making $90K, same thing. Yes, they made a deal, but the people who have to pay for this stuff didn’t sign that deal. And when the people on public salaries are not only making quite a bit more than the people paying that salary, but also getting fantastic health insurance and big pensions, well then you get taxpayers getting a little antsy. I don’t see how we’re going to get out of it without some serious pain and it will tear our communities apart.
You Don't Say
It is wrong and I live with someone who is in that position: worked for the state for 25 years, retired two years ago with a modest pension, but had saved quite a bit through deferred compensation as well. But no SS. The state is already screwing with health insurance, raising deductibles, dropping dental.
MikeBoyScout
Ah, the always effective method of divide and conquer.
In a world where so much seems to always be questionable, it is good to know that divide & conquer works every time.
Who’s making odds on which state or municipality will privatize their obligation via some 401K transfer privatization type scam?
In the end, it is all good for the banksters.
Jules
Shit like this just makes me furious.
ksmiami
In a country with so much, why do the truly powerful want the plebes fighting for scraps – or fighting to kill brown people?
This will not end well. In a strange way, maybe we need a true class war or threats of it to make the “owners” understand they have a stake in building a strong middle class as a buffer from the guillotines.
Occasional Reader
A lot of 50-somethings on guaranteed benefits are going to see them shredded. Those who aren’t are probably on 401Ks – they’ll see their retirement accounts shredded by lower returns and/or long-term unemployment. The country will be lucky to survive it politically. Hey, on the bright side, at least 20 and 30-somethings have a few decades to get used to the fact that they’re probably going to be working until they die. I’d love to think I’m being pessimistic here.
MattR
@Occasional Reader: Every now and then my belief that I am going to die before I hit retirement age seems a bit less depressing.
Citizen Alan
As tough as it is right now to be a struggling solo practitioner, I thank God that I am not still in teaching (in Mississippi, no less). If I had stayed in the teaching profession, I’d be in my 17th year of teaching, still 8 years away from retirement, and living in constant terror of a furlough and the likely theft of what little retirement I was looking forward to by Haley Fucking Barbour.
If it comes down to it, I can keep a roof over my head by working out of the back of my car and meeting clients in coffee shops. I don’t know what I’d do if I were a teacher today and had no fallback plan.
Then again, I decided to get out after Mississippi reelected Kirk Fordice, and I realized at that point that this state had embraced ignorance as a desirable end in itself.
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
And do the taxpayers realize that those pensions and health insurance benefits actually replace Social Security and Medicare, so if you yank them away, the people who were getting them are left without any income or medical care? It’s not like they’ll have Social Security to fall back on if their 401(k) goes bad — the pension is their Social Security.
Mary G
Ugh. We need to call out the real welfare queens – Frank and Jamie McCourt, the owners of the LA Dodgers, have four homes in the LA area all worth $25 million or more each. Even with the generally crappy record over the last 20 years, there are still 3 million plus a year attendees at the home games.
One thing disclosed in the divorce papers – they have paid not one dime, not even a nickel, of federal or state income tax in the past four years. It’s infuriating.
JGabriel
Ron Lieber, Your Money @ NYTimes:
Whoa. Completely biased. That should read more like this:
Just going by the quoted sections of Lieber’s column, I think it’s probably safe to call him a fucking tool.
.
gene108
Word press is eating my posts ;-(
See if this works. State employees can contribute to 403(b)’s, which work like 401(k)’s, so they have another retirement option other than their pension.
In more kicking the poor, while they are down, Camden NJ is planning on closing its library system due to lack of funding.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20100806_Camden_preparing_to_close_library_system.html
I wonder which wealthy person will replace the government in funding libraries via charity because Gov. Christie rescinded a tax on millionaires?
Anonymous At Work
This problem has a lot of causes, but one worth mentioning and examining is that state and federal workers have generous pensions as a way of compensating them for below-industry-average pay during their actual lifetimes as well. If you want to acheive Enron-style superficial savings this budget cycle, this is how you do it.
Davis X. Machina
If you’re a state there is no contract. Maine teachers litigated this in the early nineties after a pension raid by Mr. Olympia Snowe (Jock McKernan), won in the district courts, lost in the 1st circuit, and the Supremes denied cert. (Parker v. Wakelin, 123 F.3d 1)
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
Really? State workers don’t get SS# and Medicare?
arguingwithsignposts
@Svensker:
At least in several states, state workers do not contribute to Social Security. Instead, they pay into a state retirement system. Not sure about medicare.
Steve Balboni dba T.R. Donoghue
If anyone here is at all interested in this topic please do yourself a favor and read this article which lays out the legal issues which are in play with public employee pensions. You’ll be infinitely better informed on the topic.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1573864
windshouter
Just to note that many of those who have 401K plans used to have defined benefit pensions. It’s been as easy as pie to rip those away from employees in the private sector and/or change the terms up until the point you retire. After you retire, if the company goes belly up, you get get some benefit that’s not necessarily what you contracted for. A private pension would not typically have a COLA and I doubt that the COLA is insured by the federal government. IBM’ers, for example were making the same arguments over a decade ago as the teachers make now to no avail. Whether that’s right or wrong, I’m not sure public employees should have more protections that those in the private sector especially because its unlikely we can afford all the promises we’ve made. The issue then becomes how should be break the promises. If you decide to save the COLA for those who are retired, is it fairer to move the 50 year old to a 401K that can’t be funded adequately in time for retirement.
BombIranForChrist
I’m with you, Cole.
It definitely bothers me at times when I hear about people basically getting their salary or a big chunk of their salary for life, and I am busting my ass and saving just to get to a point where I’m not the working poor when I am old.
But at the same time, you have to honor your commitments. You can’t just give these people the finger and turn their lives upside down.
Davis X. Machina
@Svensker: In a third of the states they don’t get SS, and if they earned SS working outside state employ (40 quarters paying in) their SS is reduced $2 for every $3 they receive from their pension.
I went to work for the state at the age of 29, and had 46 quarters in before going under the state umbrella, plus some summer work. My SS will be offset to zero…and my survivor’s benefits under my wife’s SS will also be offset, but not quite to zero.
Medicare is just about universal at 65, though. I pay Medicare withholding, but no SS withholding.
Corner Stone
@Svensker:
Cops on the street or the County Sheriff?
And if they’re safe maybe that says something about the quality of work. Or maybe it’s that rock people have in their front lawn.
cat48
I’m waiting for this to happen to FEDGOV pensions soon. Just thinking about it is maddening since I got caught in the age bracket that has their wife’s Social Sec Ben offset by the amt of their gov pension the last time they FIXED soc sec. I never pd into SS enough to receive on my own but I did pay into Medicare for sev yrs.
Enron & Worldcom ate up some of our savings and part of it now is in corporate real estate & will probably disappear too.
Over 30 yrs of working & saving & bad investment advice brings me to my current state: Fucked.
Roger Moore
@Svensker:
Yes, they did indirectly. They voted for the elected representatives who made those deals. If they don’t want the government making those deals, they have a responsibility to vote that way.
mai naem
I know people who have local govt. jobs. The pay is not all that great. Generally the reason to work there is for the benefits. Additionally, the requirements of govt. jobs are actually greater than private sector jobs. Private sector jobs may let you get away without college degrees or associates or bachelors but govt. jobs will kick it up a notch to bachelors and masters. Plus,the retirees are getting hit with increases in health care costs. I have worked with lots of people whose spouses will work in a govt. job specifically for the health benefits. I have a friend whose husband retired after 20 yrs and didn’t get a full pension but they could buy the state insurance for $700/mo for the family(actual good insurance.) BTW, I have to go back to why were the AIG contracts good as gold but these state/municipal workers’ contracts are considered toilet paper?
apocalipstick
My wife teaches in MO. She is beginning her 31st year. She could retire now. If so, she will:
*Have no health insurance. MO law will not allow teachers to be part of the Medicare program, and it is unclear if they have spousal benefits.
*No Social Security. When she began teaching, that was illegal. It was later amended to allow younger teachers to pay into SS if they wished, but they had to pay. This was not a granted benefit. Now the SS administration is saying that those teachers who paid into Social Security will have their benefit reduced because of their “lavish” pension.
*The state legislature continually tries to grab the teachers retirement fund. The MO teacher retirement plan (I don’t know about other states) is a private, self-funded entity. It’s not even state revenue or funds. My wife has had 10% of her paycheck withheld since day 1. The legislature wants to grab that fund and fold it into gen rev to make the budget look better.
Municipal employees might be a different kettle of fish, but in Missouri teacher pensions are not part of the problem.
I will say that I laugh at the fellow I know who worships Ron Paul while working for Rural Development, in no small part because of the security and pension. Yeah, he needs to be kicked in the balls.
Martin
As someone with one of those in-theory generous public pensions (I can retire with full salary at 61 – that’s with 35 years service) I also don’t care for the bias in this article.
In the private sector I could earn 50% more than I do in this job. My benefits are better and my pension is better, but I think if you added the entire compensation package together for the public sector me and for the private sector me, they come out pretty comparable. The difference is that I’ve chosen (yes, chosen) to get by on less now in exchange for the security of having a far more predictable retirement income and benefits (I don’t keep my health benefits, but I will have the option to pay to continue my current policy).
The issue here isn’t that the state necessarily overcommitted themselves (even here in CA). It’s that the pensions had relied on a much more stable and much more economically productive investment landscape. California has massive pension plans and they used to invest that pension money back into the state, which helped create jobs and infrastructure, which would help the tax base and keep the whole system running somewhat predictably and in a self-supporting manner. But two agents have stepped in to fuck with the system – the anti-tax crusaders that have wrecked the ability to invest in infrastructure and to recoup the tax revenues that come from that economic growth, and the Wall Street wizards that have made it increasingly easy for those investment dollars to go into the pockets of the wealthy rather than for the common good. The old model is having enough value siphoned off of it that CalPERS is permanently reducing their forward rate of return by 25%.
The whole scheme was designed to reward those that would take financial risk, even if that risk didn’t lead to any productive societal benefit. The only recourse to that kind of behavior is taxation, so I don’t see any recourse but to tax the shit out of them.
cat48
@apocalipstick: That’s the windfall offset brought to you by the Reagan admin and their socsec FIX! The offset law passed then.
apocalipstick
@cat48:
I know. Oh, how I know!
Mark
I tell ya what: most white people over age 50 in this country voted for Ronald Reagan, which decided my future without my say-so (I was 7 in 1984). Most white people over age 65 (and probably 50) voted for GWB and John McCain.
You get what you pay for, fuckers. Here are the number of counties in blue states that never voted for Reagan:
WA – 2, OR – 3, CA – 3, MT – 2, NM – 5, CO – 4
IA – 4, MO – 5, MN – 17, WI – 10, IL – 3, MI – 3
IN – 1, FL – 1, OH – 6, MD – 2, DE – 0, NJ – 1, PA – 9
NY – 6, CT – 0, RI – 1, MA – 6, VT – 0, NH – 0, ME – 0
That’s 67 counties across 24 states (plus another 27 in MN/WI). Old white people fucked themselves, and fucked everyone younger than them. It was always the other guy who was going to be 90 years old and living off cat food.
hitchhiker
@Mark:
I’m a white person over 55 who never voted for Reagan and who volunteered on every election, local, state and national, in an effort to keep as many lying fools out of public office as possible.
I get that it’s infuriating, right? But give some of us a little credit for at least trying to hold back the tsunami of bullshit that has been looming over us for the last 30 years. Hard as it is to believe, it could have been a whole lot worse.
EthylEster
A couple of things:
1. There is no free lunch.
2. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
3. Life is not fair.
I have a friend who works for the City of Portland which has a VERY generous retirement plan. When she described her benefits to me 10 years ago, I remember thinking “How can the city afford that?” The answer: they can’t and could never have but, hey, who’s checking up on them?
Also in response to those saying that if the state or local plans go bust then people are really screwed because they did not pay into SS: avoiding paying into SS was a feature of many state and fed pensions, not a bug.
Every time I hear someone say “It’s guaranteed” I wince. Personally I am not looking forward to finding out what TIAA-CREF means when they say they guarantee a 3% return on annuity accounts.
ThresherK
@Roger Moore:
Ooh, let’s have a referendum on this! It always works!
Seriously, I didn’t even have to click the link, because it already says “your-money” right there. “You” are a taxpayer of certain means, and you shouldn’t be made to honor those contracts. If not, how did this information get into your filthy, impoverished hands anyway?
And, thanks, NYT, for forgetting that public sector pensioners pay taxes.
Martin
@EthylEster: FWIW, my dad used to manage a TIAA-CREF annuity. For the various places he worked, he said TIAA was the real deal – they did shit right.
SiubhanDuinne
1. I had my 68th birthday a couple of days ago. I am whiter than sticky rice. I never voted for Ronald Reagan or anyone named Bush or Dole or McCain.
2. At my age, I am wondering whether I hope to live to see the inevitable (equivalent of) storming of the Bastille, or if I would prefer to be long gone by then. If things don’t turn around soon, it *will* happen.
steve
I am on the faculty of a public university in Illinois, which is sitting on one of the biggest pension time bombs in the nation. When I was hired in 1985 (at an annual salary of $15,600), I was told that I was required to enroll in the state universities pension system, and I would not be paying into Social Security or Medicare. I asked if I could opt out and continue paying into SS, Medicare, and the TIAA-CREF plan I had from a previous academic job, and the answer was a big fat NO. My colleagues told me not to worry about it, that it really was a good deal and I should just stick it out and put up with the sub-par salary until I was eligible to retire.
The state has been routinely skipping its payments into the pension fund for years and years, and now it’s a big problem. I wasn’t given a choice — the required payments were deducted from my paychecks — but the state blew off its obligations. Now, the Chicago Tribune has been running nonstop editorials which place the blame squarely on the greedy public employees and their so-called “lavish” pensions. The supposedly unbiased news portion of the paper runs exposés in which they cherry-pick rare examples of pension abuses (usually retired top-level administrators) and conveniently ignore the fact that we don’t get SS or Medicare. A pension reform bill passed earlier this year did nothing to quiet their incessant drum-beating because it didn’t punish us enough. When I tried explaining my side of the issue on the Tribune’s comment boards, other commenters told me I was a crook who was stealing from innocent taxpayers.
I keep telling myself that the state wouldn’t cut off my pension and render me broke and homeless in my old age, but this is the state that elected Rod Blagojevich twice. My colleagues and I are slowly but surely being moved into the bad-guy role in this mess, and all we did was accept a job and show up for work.
low-tech cyclist
Random thought: remember the S&L mess from ~20 years ago? When the story broke and our politicians were dealing with it, the estimated cost was half a trillion dollars. But it Had To Be Done, so they fixed it. (Fortunately, it wound up costing more like $100B, but our policymakers put us on the hook for the whole half-trillion if it had come to that.)
So now the assorted state and local employee pension systems have a trillion-dollar shortfall. We all know that a trillion dollars in 2010 is a good deal smaller than a half-trillion was in 1990. Seems like we could say making these pension funds whole Has To Be Done, but of course the David Broders and Robert J. Samuelsons of the world are going to say no such thing, and the GOP is drooling at the prospect of seeing teachers’ and policemens’ pensions gutted.
Half the problem with this country right now is that the people setting the tone of the debate are all anywhere from upper-upper-upper middle class, to filthy rich.
Wilson Heath
Yes, those lucky ducky public school teachers struck again. 90% of diddly squat is backbreaking.
Killing public-employee pensions for “fiscal need” is another component of starving the beast and making sure that the GOP mantra that government doesn’t work comes true when no one is willing to staff it for peanuts. And yes, conserva-Dems are also in on the nonsense, but they’re frigging morons.
steve
@low-tech cyclist:
That’s the thing that bothers me the most about this situation and the typical media response: the animosity toward public employees of every stripe and the compulsion to punish them simply for being public employees, and not mighty wealth-creating John Galts.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the Chicago Tribune has also been running editorials and “investigative” stories about how public school teachers in Illinois are grossly overpaid.
soonergrunt
This is exactly what happened to the military. When I first joined, we were told that all of our medical expenses, including those for our families were covered by the government at full government expense. It was an enlistment incentive.
Now, there’s not a single member of the service, including all the ones still on duty from my time, who isn’t on a co-pay plan called Tricare, which for which servicemembers have to pay a monthly premium and a couple of the plans require co-pays. Reservists, after being told that you made it a career with the reserves and would be taken care of, are finding our benefits cut. This started in the Bush II administration. It hasn’t continued yet under Obama, but it will, because there are enough fucking conservative jackasses who’ve never served a day in their lives or ever felt responsible for honoring the people’s promises that there will be no appropriate taxation to cover the government’s responsibilities. But of course, we’ll continue buying F-35 fighter planes that don’t fly or fight and can’t defend themselves and cost as much as F-22s while be less capable than the cheaper F-16s.
That’s because Congress gets more money from Lockheed Martin than they do from the AUSA.
Paula
Defined benefit pension are tricky. What they should move to is a defined contribution.
Thanks bankers and politicians for crashing our economy.
jpe
It’s insane that there are still defined benefit plans. Totally insane.
tim
Cole, are you really a disinterested party here? Aren’t you on the Pentagon Early Retirement Gravy Train? Am I wrong?
Steve J.
Matt Welch and the glibertarian wingnut welfare recipients at Reason have been beating this drum for a while now.
So has Rush Limbaugh