Puerto Rico Declares Bankruptcy

[Skabungus]

David Horn Wrote:

Galen Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:

Galen Wrote:

Odin Wrote:PR needs statehood ASAP. It's current status puts it at the mercy of Congress, it's a colony that has no legal autonomy other than what is granted to it. Independence would be bad because IMO it being a US state with it and it's people protected under the US Constitution would be far better than it being just another Latin American nation constantly being fucked with by American corporate interests.

I don't see how that will help since public pensions are in the process of eating state budgets.  I suggest you consider Illinois to be prime example of this.  Just another example of the fiscal mismanagement that is so common in the public sector.

Yeah, they should just cancel them like the private sector has done.  And I say that without defending the PR government.  They've done a miserable job for a long time, but they didn't just flush their employees down the drain with they didn't need them anymore.

Your wishes do not trump mathematics and the limitation of finite resources.

So you favor the private enterprise example of underfunding and abandonment then?  There are no good actors here.  The fact that entities of all stripes were systematically allowed to underfund their pension systems reflects badly all around.

David's right.  Pensions in both the private and public sectors have been chronically under funded and poorly managed.  That said, there are still more solvent pension plans in the public sector than you'll find in the private sector. 

I've worked in the public sector for 23 years.  I've worked in the private sector (real estate finance and development) for 9.  Pensions in the public sector are essentially gone.  Most pensioners have long retired.  I can think of only a handful in my current agency and they all have 30+ years of service.  Pensioners are just living too long!!! The industry standard in the public sector is the 401(k) with employer contributions.  Some agencies do pretty well as far as matching the employee's contributions up to around 12-14%. 

My time in the private sector is what sent me back to the public sector.  Even large companies offer...........shit for retirement, and little in the way of annual and sick leave.  You are supposed to grind away for that bonus.  It's a scam.   I took a huge cut in salary moving back to the public sector, but frankly the annual leave, retirement plan and truly outstanding health coverage (I belong to a group with 55,000 members) made the decision quite easy. 

We might also benefit from taking a long look backward.  The concept of "retirement" at the ripe old age of 65, with all your subsistence needs paid for, vacations and golf memberships, etc. is the current expectation.  Really though we should see it as an experiment started at the close of WWII and ending for the bulk of Americans in the early part of the 21st century.  Retirement isn't practical for any society.  Having the lion's share of your elders sitting idle, playing bingo, golfing and eating discounted meals is societal death sentence.