Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Starting to hit the pension nail on its head

Financial difficulties can be a good thing when it forces prioritization. In flush times, a satellite dish with every channel in the world might be a lot of fun. When times get tough, it makes sense to figure out which channels you can live without.

The question we are going to have to answer in Kentucky is when our public defined-benefit pension plans become like Australian rules football on ESPN 12. The prospect of massive taxpayer losses have been too easy to overlook until now.

As part of a CNN Money article about how private defined-benefit plans should all be gone soon, there is this detail about why these taxpayer time bombs have hung on longer:

Pretty soon, more people may come to think of paying for public employee benefits that are unavailable in the real world as akin to sitting around watching Australian rules football on ESPN 12.