The lesson for today is the American pension system: What to look forward to when you retire.

This text is drawn from the government rule book, with its contradictory and often-overlapping laws relating to pensions.

Here are the highlights: 

• For the first time, the percentage of workers who will receive a fixed monthly pension is steadily declining.
• Women who retire from jobs in businesses receive smaller pensions than men.
• The percentage of workers who will receive reduced pension benefits is growing. And half of all workers have no pension plan at all.
• Corporations removed $21 billion from their employees' pension plans during the 1980s. Overall, nearly 2,000 corporations dipped into employee pension funds for at least $1 million each.
• Conscientious workers who establish their own individual retirement accounts - believing them to be insured by the federal government - one day may discover to their dismay that many are not.
• Workers in the private sector receive far smaller pensions than workers in local, state and federal governments, which now employ 17 percent of the American workforce.
• And the people who made all this possible - members of Congress - will continue to receive the best pensions of all.

Label this pension chaos.
Then understand that, barring a massive revision of the rule book by Congress, these conditions will continue to deteriorate.

In the meantime, watch for the coming war between those who work for government and those who don't.
It will come when workers in private industry realize how much power public-employee pension funds wield.

This Analysis by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele


Original Post.