Saturday, June 12, 2010

Seven State Pension Plans Out of Money by 2020

In a system, gone completely loony, pension plans in seven state will be busted by 2020 yet the states keep hiring public workers. Please consider Pension Plans Go Broke as Public Payrolls Expand. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... W.rqJzAad4

Seven states will run out of money to pay public pensions by 2020. That hasn’t stopped them from hiring new employees.

The seven are Illinois, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, Hawaii, Louisiana and Oklahoma, according to Joshua D. Rauh of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Combined, they added 9,700 workers to both state and local government payrolls between December 2007 and April of this year, says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Generous and bloated are the terms that have been used to describe them; critics have set up websites to pillory those government retirees who enjoy $100,000-plus annual pensions and other goodies, such as health-care benefits for themselves and their families for life.

“Are State Public Pensions Sustainable? Why the Federal Government Should Worry About State Pension Liabilitiesâ€