Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Retirement
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 03-27-2017, 06:23 AM
 
Location: Myrtle Creek, Oregon
15,293 posts, read 17,622,363 times
Reputation: 25231

Advertisements

If the PBGC runs out of money, the taxpayer will be hung for the bill. In the case of the mineworkers, they can go after Peabody Coal and other operators, who shed the fiscal responsibility by spinning off and selling corporations with all the debt. Thanks to the supreme court Citizen United decision, the corporate shell is no longer absolute, so the feds can go after the personal fortunes of the people who pulled the tricky bookkeeping. The next couple decades should be interesting in the history of wealth redistribution.

Many of us will not live to see the fallout, but it's interesting to speculate.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 03-27-2017, 06:35 AM
 
7,898 posts, read 7,092,882 times
Reputation: 18587
This post needs to be moved to the "Economics" forum. That is the place for one gloom and doom prediction after another. Mathjak's list does not even come close to covering all the gloom and doom scenarios. The theories abound: too much debt, stock prices about to drop to zero, high unemployment (because the government fakes the data), all sorts of conspiracy theories, a looming dementia care crisis, poor old people dragging down society, poor young people dragging down society, oligarchs and rich people stealing all the money, robots taking all the jobs, GMOs poisoning all of us, low interest rates, bubbles everywhere......


A few pension funds falling short pales by comparison.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 06:55 AM
 
4,445 posts, read 1,443,179 times
Reputation: 3609
There's never a shortage of things to worry about in life.

You know, maybe fretting about money, pensions, and your financial future is a good thing. Because if your primary concerns are those issues, that means you're not worried about your health. And if that's the case, take a second and count yourself fortunate.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 07:06 AM
 
Location: Planet Woof
3,222 posts, read 4,557,619 times
Reputation: 10238
I think this topic is relevant to the retirement forum. Thank you, OP, for posting.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 10:16 AM
 
Location: La La Land
1,616 posts, read 2,483,622 times
Reputation: 2839
Let's not be so quick to let the bankers and Wall Street off the hook. Pension funds have financial advisers that make predictions about rates of return based on market projections. While they may not be 100% accurate they should be relatively close. Assuming the market behaves normally (including ups and downs).

When you have the serious and criminal market manipulations practiced by banks and Wall Street over the past decade, both private investors (the little guys) and pension funds suffer greatly. The deficits experienced by many pension funds today are a direct result of the sub prime mortgage debacle of 2008.

Yes, many municipalities were unable to meet pension obligations due to poor returns.
It seems obvious to any honest person that the banks and Wall Street should be responsible for these deficits since tax dollars bailed their crooked butts out and they engaged in criminal activity.

Instead of holding the crooks responsible the decision is to punish the workers who never did anything wrong and made their required contributions.

Is that what they mean by making America great again?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 10:17 AM
 
12,022 posts, read 11,521,051 times
Reputation: 11136
The state pensions will go to the taxpayers to make up the difference when they lower their investment assumptions. The trigger could be the aftermath of the next recession when the Fed is too slow to climb out of negative deposit rates. I don't believe they've ever asked their members to pay more. It's always the taxpayer. The crisis won't cause the next recession. The next recession may cause further deterioration in pension funds and states' finances.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 10:42 AM
 
2,499 posts, read 2,620,798 times
Reputation: 1789
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchoro View Post
The state pensions will go to the taxpayers to make up the difference when they lower their investment assumptions. The trigger could be the aftermath of the next recession when the Fed is too slow to climb out of negative deposit rates. I don't believe they've ever asked their members to pay more. It's always the taxpayer. The crisis won't cause the next recession. The next recession may cause further deterioration in pension funds and states' finances.

Completely false. When I initially enrolled in the pension the formula was 3.2% or so from the employee (depending on age at enrollment) and 6.8% from the employer. At that ratio our pension was considered over 105% funded.

It went to 5% for the employee to 5.5% and is now at 7.5%. The employer portion is now less than 3%. The issue is the employer needs to make up 22+ years of missed payments plus the investment returns on those contributions.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 11:00 AM
 
Location: San Diego CA
8,429 posts, read 6,816,094 times
Reputation: 16815
And some companies are already scrambling to get out of their pension obligations. A family member worked for Alcatel Lucent and retired. He was recently advised by mail that his former employer could no longer guarantee that they could send a monthly pension check on a regular basis. There was a lump sump offer and he took it.


I took a lump sum pension years ago when I retired early. No problems to date. Many of my coworkers decided to stay on and work at least until 65 or older to build up their benefits. It turned out that when many of these folks got close to 65 they were laid off and forced back into the job market into competition with much younger job seekers.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 11:06 AM
 
31,679 posts, read 40,965,089 times
Reputation: 14424
To the OP
And the same applies to Social Security
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-27-2017, 11:13 AM
 
12,022 posts, read 11,521,051 times
Reputation: 11136
Quote:
Originally Posted by tom1944 View Post
Completely false. When I initially enrolled in the pension the formula was 3.2% or so from the employee (depending on age at enrollment) and 6.8% from the employer. At that ratio our pension was considered over 105% funded.

It went to 5% for the employee to 5.5% and is now at 7.5%. The employer portion is now less than 3%. The issue is the employer needs to make up 22+ years of missed payments plus the investment returns on those contributions.
I said a state pension fund. I'm aware of the cases where Virginia and Texas recently upped the contribution from the government in lieu of having the employee contribute more.

Virginia's pension payments soared

In California, they're talking about overturning prop 13 or raising other taxes to make up for the pension fund problems.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Retirement

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top