[quote=SD Realtor]”The solution is trivial: Convert to individual 401K retirement accounts – like everybody else has – and the pension problems go away.”
What? That sounds way to complex to me.[/quote]
Aside from the fact that they cannot legally “convert” existing benefits, how does one allocate the existing money to existing retirees and existing employees? Are you suggesting they liquidate the funds? How do you suggest they do that? DB pension funds don’t have separate accounts per employee.
Again, public employers use these benefits to draw the best employees and **keep them there.** The training costs, especially for safety employees, are too high to handle high turnover rates. Without these benefits, the turnover rates would increase dramatically, increasing recruiting and training costs significantly — the cost to recruit and train safety employees, especially if the employer provides academy training, can easily run in the $30K-$70K range PER EMPLOYEE.
