You got me, I forgot his real name, wine tends to strip me of my trivial pursuit prowess.

The reason they gave them those pensions was that they died shortly after starting to collect them, over time, the funds swelled, the pension funds were sustainable until they began raising benefits for everyone. Governemnt entities can’t help themselves with large pots of money.

The reason they don’t base pensions on actual on the job deaths is that the pension doesn’t pay for those for the most part, insurance (workmans comp, life insurance, etc.) pays for that. Pensions are for those that survive and if the average retired teacher lives thirty years into retirement and the average cop lives seven, they can pay the cop a bigger check because it will actually end up costing less. Plus more cops don’t make it to retirement than do, abandoning the funds placed into the pension fund, if they don’t work a certain amount of time, they forfeit the money, not so with 410k style retirements.

It’s been studied and ultimately it will be changed away from a defined benefit, it will probably benefit those who live a very short amount of time into retirement anyway.