[quote=harvey]- The reason private-sector pensions are going away is because shareholders have become wise to the issues described the prior points, and accounting changes have made it is harder to hide the obligations on the financial statements. Basically the market has spoken. Government has been able to get away with hiding pension costs longer because taxpayers don’t scrutinize the books as much as investors do.
– Military pensions are also a growing problem as life expectancies increase, but we don’t see the impact because it just gets piled on with the national debt that will be monetized away eventually. Plus “half-pay” doesn’t sound very generous – if you do the math you see that it can be though. But the public doesn’t do the math. Of course military pensions are also political land-mines, as no one dares question military pay.[/quote]
-There has been a pretty steady march of corporations continuing to screw over the little guy buy cutting benefits and perks like pensions (although some companies do have pretty sweet matching for their 401k plans). This trend might reverse itself if the economy ever gets back to 5-6% unemployment, when companies fret more about keeping their talent rather than cutting costs.
-Enlisted military pay just isn’t very good at all, and there are roughly 5x more enlisted military than officers. A decent chunk of officers are in highly skilled professions (doctor, pilot) where sticking around for full retirement comes with a significant earnings cost. Retaining good talent in the military is already a problem, and cutting pensions without increasing salaries would only make that problem worse. Of course, with the ends of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq we should be able to continue cutting our forces, unless Romney gets elected. Then, we’re probably screwed in terms of over exuberant military spending and use of force.
