Public Sector Pensions are Golden

Time magazine has a story on retirement and pensions:

All pensions and health-care plans are not created equal. At the same time millions of workers in private industry have lost the benefits they once thought they had for life, another group is doing quite nicely, secure in the knowledge that their benefits are protected forever--not by some government agency, but directly by you, the taxpayer.

They are public employees in state and local governments, ranging from teachers to cops. Most collect guaranteed pensions provided through state and local taxes and their own contributions and investment returns. Overall, 90% of public employees enjoy a defined-benefit pension, compared with only 20% (and falling) of the private work force.

Even though the commitment is there, the money isn't. A study by analysts at Barclays Global Investors in San Francisco estimates that public-employee pension funds in the U.S. are short $700 billion. That's more than all state and local governments collected last year in property, sales and corporate income taxes combined. As a result, many employees in the private sector will get hit with a double whammy: while their pensions erode, increasingly they will be hit with cuts in government services and forced to pay higher taxes to cover the pensions of public employees, the kind they can only dream about. In three-fourths of the states, public pensions even come with annual cost-of-living increases, a fringe benefit absent from private pensions.

The "special class" certainly has it good.You might say you are a slave if you aren't working for the government.In New York state and Illinois the public pensions can't be cut because cuts are protected in their state constitutions.Bet you don't get that deal if you work in the private sector? This could be the beginning of real class war:those who pay taxes vs. those who consume taxes.