Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 8371062" data-attributes="member: 6701124">Is part of that the accounting change a few years (decade now?) ago that required the pension funds to have more put aside?In any case, the pensions and promises of COLAs is part of what had justified the low salaries for state employees in places like Illinois.  There, it feels like a big part of it it wasn't the promised pensions that were the problem (although the COLA promise seems inane), it was that the state (in the form of generations of elected officials as chosen by generations of voters voters) that went for tax cut after tax cut instead of paying for things.It feels like a lot of corporations did something similar - didn't almost all of them formerly have pensions?  They escaped in many cases by arranging bankruptcy restructurings that lined the executives pockets but nuked the pension funds.In any case the states have already promised the pensions to those who worked for the state for them instead of higher salaries.  If the citizens of the state can't pay what they owe through tax dollars, then why should these workers be the only ones to suffer while the others who didn't work for the state and got paid more get to keep all of their 401ks?For future employees?  Sure, a 401k or 403b with matching funds equivalent to whatever the state originally was going to put towards the pension seems fair.  Instead the matching funds are less to help bail out the pension funds, so that the new employees get less later on to make sure the already or near retired get the full thing.</blockquote>

Verification