zlacker

>>rntn+(OP)
Not all, and they are rarer today, pensions were totally insane back in the day.

One of my mothers friends, who is now in her 80's, has been retired on a pension for over 40 years. She started working for her municipality right out of high school at 18, and worked 25 years as a clerk to get a full pension. Retired at 43(!) with 75% final pay (annually adjusted) and lifelong medical benefits.

Its totally insane and completely unsustainable. Back in the day people usually keeled over at 65 and the US was viewed as having achieved infinite growth forever, so perhaps back then it was a reasonable but generous offer. Today however it's just straight up corruption and waste to offer benefits like that.

>>Workac+7f
My Dad's friend is a retired fire chief, my Dad told me he makes $300K a year in retirement! That is beyond insane as it ends up costing (with a retirement at say 55) about 30 or so years of payments which adds up to $9M for the reminder of his life. This is clearly not sustainable and when you add up social security and 401k it ends up with a kings ransom for a public servant.

>>subsub+yh
What about solidarity? Instead of criticizing another worker’s situation as “insane”, we should be asking: why can’t we also have this kind of retirement package? They’ve successfully pitted worker vs worker.

I don’t think that retired fire chief’s (or school teachers') retirement is what’s wrong: what’s wrong is that most of us will not have a retirement that good. Why is that? It is possible to answer that question without tearing down someone else’s situation.

>>ryandr+6K
Because it isn't sustainable.

Only a select few can acquire that kind of retirement and it's borrowed from everyone else. It's selfish.

The pension generations over spent and borrowed heavily to fund their retirement and lifestyles. The subsequent generations pay for that. It's selfish and short sighted.