The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

Re:The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size o... by gok on Monday July 30, 2018 @05:38PM (#17648302)

That is not the issue this article is talking about. Public pension spending in the US is not especially low compared to the rest of the OECD [1]; as a portion of GDP it's larger than Norway or the Netherlands, which have much higher taxes.

The issue is that those pensions have been comically mismanaged; edit: and were not sustainable in the first place

[1] https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/pension-spending.htm

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Re:The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size o... by dunpeal on Monday July 30, 2018 @05:45PM (#17648366)

Defined-benefit pensions are economically bankrupt when lifespan keeps increasing. This has been known for decades[1] and is the reason why none of us reading this have a DB pension, except those lucky few state employees who got a sweetheart deal all those years ago.

Of course, the fact these pensions were managed by state government (read: mismanaged) only accelerated the inevitable crisis.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/10/demise-d...

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Re:The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size o... by gok on Monday July 30, 2018 @05:55PM (#17648471)

These plans wouldn't have worked even if lifespans remained the same. Indeed, US life expectancy is actually down recently.

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