A look at the costs of public sector pensions at home and abroad

From the: UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

People retiring from the private sector need to save :£250,000 to buy pension income equal to the national minimum wage — currently, :£12,646 a year — or a total of :£518,000 for a pension equal to national average earnings of :£25,900.

These are among many eye-stretching facts in a new analysis of how unfunded promises to pay index-linked pensions to public sector workers are way beyond what most private sector savers can hope to achieve — and how these debts will burden children who have not yet left school.

The: Intergenerational Foundation (IF): think tank used freedom of information requests to find out that 78,000 former public sector workers enjoy pensions of more than :£25,900; and more than 12,000 get more than :£50,000 a year. Three quarters of the latter are doctors and this index-linked income is irrespective of any private work or savings.

While many public sector workers pay into pension schemes, benefits usually outstrip employee contributions and the difference — or deficit — must be funded by future generations. Taxpayers’ total liability for public sector pensions, according to the report: ‘Are Government Pensions Unfair on the Younger Generation?’ is equivalent to :£45,000 for every household in Britain and totals :£1.2 trillion or :£1,200,000,000,000.

An IF spokesman said: “This demonstrates the true scale of: pension apartheid: in the UK with news that 88pc:  of public sector workers are currently entitled to pensions related to their final salaries, which are typically the most generous type of pension, compared to just 10pc of workers in the private sector.”

But this sort of thing happens in the United States as well. Consider this article from Business Insider.

Excerpt:

The “not so exclusive” California $100,000 Club continues to experience explosive growth. Let’s check in on this club which since last we checked a year ago has seen close to a 25% increase in size.

Thanks to the folks at: Fix Pensions First: for this fabulous expose,

12,199: retired California government workers receive pensions in excess of $100,000.

[…]

THE TOP 10 LIST

Name

Monthly

Annual

Employer

Malkenhorst, Bruce V

$44,189.02

$530,268.24

Vernon

Fuster, Joaquin M

$26,226.08

$314,712.96

UC Los Angeles

Gerth, Donald R

$24,590.52

$295,086.24

CSU Sacramento

Garret, William

$24,129.46

$289,553.52

El Cajon

Stahl, James F

$23,289.98

$279,479.76

LA Co Sanit #2

Schlag, John D

$22,604.16

$271,249.92

UC Los Angeles

Southard, Glenn D

$22,596.42

$271,157.04

Indio

Adams, Randy G

$22,119.79

$265,437.48

Bell

Newell, George T

$21,708.82

$260,505.84

Santa Clara County

Schachter, Julius

$21,470.66

$257,647.92

UC San Francisco

When we checked in on this club a year ago, it had 9,812 members.

I think that it’s about time that we started making moral arguments against these inflated public sector compensation packages. It’s not fair to make today’s children pay those costs – they already have student loans to worry about, and they can’t even find jobs because of the anti-business policies of the Obama administration.

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