Yes, Wall Street has corrupted the pension plans. That’s exactly what I had said in my previous post.
Yes, public employees would be less effective without these benefits, and turnover rates would be much higher. These jobs value experience, because that’s the ONLY way you’re going to know how to do your job in many of these positions. The costs to recruit, train, and equip many of these employees are extremely high, so turnover is a huge cost to public employers.
Defined benefit plans encourage the most experienced and valuable employees to stay, and this reduces costs for the public employers, while also ensuring that they have the highest-qualified workforce.
And the “state of California” isn’t in the investment business. The pension funds most certainly are, as they should be.
Once again, private sector workers have Social Security AND defined contribution plans. In many cases, this costs almost as much as a DB plan (most public employees who’ve worked long enough to get the full defined benefit do not get Social Security).
And not “everyone else in the workforce” has a DC pension plan. Many have defined benefits, and DB plans were the norm a few decades ago…you know, when the middle class and the economy were at their strongest. Corporate greed has caused the demise of the middle class; not unions, and not DB pension plans.
It’s amazing how the right-wing propagandists have managed to fool so many people into working against their own interests.
