I wrote this over a year ago but never published it … nothing much has changed. 🤑

We have reached the point where there is basically only one way to assure you can retire with a pension; work for government … state, local or the federal government civilian or military.
The rest of the workers in America rarely have a traditional defined benefit pension these days (truthfully most never did unless you worked for a large employer), but have the privilege of paying taxes to fund their friends in public employment.

While there has been a modest decline in recent years still about 84% of government workers have a traditional pension (for many in addition to a 401k type plan). Compare that with the following:

SOURCE: Employee Benefits Research Institute

Why is this true you may ask (I hope). Mainly because politicians want votes and to get them they align with public employee unions and make promises that often turn out to be unaffordable and create billions of dollars in liabilities for taxpayers.

I often see ads on television run by public unions, mostly teachers unions, in which they attack a politician for not funding their pensions and fulfilling the promises made (although no one has lost their pension). I wonder if they ever stop and think that those ads are seen by people who don’t have a pension and who are the ones who must pay for the public employee pensions through their taxes. I wonder if state workers ever consider that on average their taxpayer-funded total compensation is far higher than their private sector counterparts. Of course they don’t.

Source:Pension Rights Center

Any questions?