Many pensions are not the "have $27k/yr starting at age 67" kind, but the "have $100k/yr + benefits starting at age 55" kind. Its the latter that people find upsetting - nothing close to poverty level.

Sure, but people took those jobs in large part because of those pensions. It is part of the entire compensation package. They often times took less money up front in return for better pensions.

The problem is that this was not properly budgeted for when funding the pensions.

When you take a job and its benefits are not properly funded or the funding assumptions are insane (8% growth). That's on you.

How is a worker supposed to know if the benefits are properly funded? Even if they can know, some of these used to be funded correctly (when they were hired) but later cuts made them underfunded.

Are you serious? You expect a 22 year old firefighter to know how well funded the pension system is?

Give me a break.

Yes. Stop absolving adults of responsibilities they’re well capable of owning. You don’t get to hide being big dollar signs and claim ignorance.

So they should comb through auditor's reports, and recognize when the funding entity has been improperly seconding pension contributions over to the general fund such that it will run dry in 23 years instead of the mandated 42?

If we're lucky, we find out about these things when a government changes hands and an audit is conducted - typically years after the fact. Also, one can start one's career under a sound system that is eroded through mismanagement.

It's in the news all the time - it takes a minute to do a google search. Also, you have a union - if it screws you, well that's on you for being in the union.

It's in the news years after the pensions are granted. A lot of people choose the jobs before the news started coming out.

A lot of the people who have these pensions took the jobs before google even existed, so telling them they should have googled this is ridiculous.

I don't blame workers for taking a good deal. I do blame the folks making crazy promises that have no way to fund without being bailed out.

That blame seems misplaced given the end state.

When the folks making crazy promises are dead and/or gone by the time their promises are broken when the funds come up short, the workers who took the good deal are left holding the bag.

We must retroactively assign blame to the worker who was lured into accepting obvious false promises. It is perversely the most compassionate thing we can do: blame and shame past workers for making stupid deals. We do this so that future generations will learn the hard lesson that governments cannot be trusted with their investments. There is no power in investment.

Blaming past politicians for their malfeasance is exactly how we enable today's politicians to keep kicking the can down the road.

There's lots of proposals in this thread to inflict the consequences on the workers.

"They often times took less money up front in return for better pensions."

That is no longer the case when compared with comparable private sector jobs since at least the early 2000s in many parts of the country.

I have never seen this to be the case. Do you have any data?