Re: NYTM: The End of Pensions

If there's a much-anticipated "request" for a taxpayer bailout in the
future, justice demands cost reductions -- reductions of benefits paid
to people by the PBGC -- as part of any such deal. That should involve
all beneficiaries, not only those of whatever company finally "forces"
[sic] taxpayer "assistance."

Defined-benefit pensions and the concept of retirement that rests on it
have been long-obsolete. Particularly obsolete and wrong has been the
expectation that people can spend half their lives and more outside the
labor force, in adult years at the expense of others, no less.

Smarter people in Europe as well as elsewhere have long advocated such
measures as indexing public retirement "social spending" (that is,
retirement welfare) programs to life expectancy. (A better method
still would be to index based on the generalized onset of disability
that is considered an inevitable consequence of truly old age and its
hated companion, senescence.)

As to government pensions and benefits such as lavish health care
benefits, these have long constituted abuse of the public, they are
even more unsustainable and less sensible than generalized or universal
public retirement welfare programs, and better people among the
taxpayer base and other groups on society will demand reforms and cost
controls and reductions eventually. (If for no other reason, the
better people won't only refuse to tolerate government retirees living
well and much better than others, at others' expense, but properly will
see lavish government retiree expenditures as a primary source of fund
diversion for generalized public retirement welfare programs and any
expansion of public health care in the USA.)

.