Pensions

[buckeye45_73]

Pension Envy: Who Has More

UPDATE: PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has confirmed that Obama does participate in the Illinois pension fund, which was organized in the Cayman Islands and has interests in China.


OOOPS.....Obama is in the Caymen Islands and in China....yet another hypocrtical democrat.........

 

[waltky]

Kentucky just cut education 4.5% to fund state pensions...

Report: State, Local Gov’t Pension Funds Have More Unfunded Liabilities Than Corporate Plans
April 26, 2016 – Pension plans for state and local government employees have more unfunded liabilities than corporate pension funds, which are held to a higher standard by the government, according to a March report entitled The Coming Pensions Crisis by Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS).

“In the United States, current unfunded corporate defined benefit commitments total approximately $425 billion. State and local government employee defined benefit pension plans have from $1 trillion to $3 trillion in unfunded commitments (depending on the discount rate used).... “Unfortunately, while governments often impose genuine requirements for funding contributions on corporate sponsors, they rarely impose those standards on themselves,” the Citi report stated. “For example, in the U.S., public plans frequently increase benefits but fail to make the appropriate contribution,” the report continued. “The Government Accounting Standards Board puts out the annual required contribution (ARC) but unfortunately, the word ‘required’ is just a word….The fact is that many public plan sponsors have simply not made the ARC.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest Annual Survey of Public Pensions, “government contributions increased 11.1 percent” in 2014, “driving total contributions up 8.4 percent, from $153.7 billion to $166.6 billion.” Earnings on pension fund investments also increased 40.6 percent that year, while the average annual benefit paid to more than 9.5 million state and local government retirees was $26,455, according to the Census Bureau.

But Citi warned that the trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities will create serious financial problems for state and local governments over the next decade, when 45 million baby boomers are expected to retire. “These liabilities also result in large generational imbalances as a declining ratio of workers to retirees puts unsustainable pressure on future taxpayers to fund a dramatically greater population of pensioners,” the report stated. “In coming years, states like New Jersey and Illinois will face tremendous budget pressure due to expensive pension commitments. And many municipalities in California will face difficulty meeting their pension obligations to the state fund CalPERS (California Public Employees' Retirement System).”

According to an issue brief published last month by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA), “4.1 percent [on average] of all state and local government spending is used to fund pension benefits for employees.” Although the percentage differs from state to state, with Louisiana contributing the most (7.79 percent) and North Dakota (1.63 percent) the least, NASRA noted that employee contributions generally make up about a quarter of the total pension fund payments, with governments (i.e. taxpayers) contributing the remaining three quarters.

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