It is simply not possible economically to support these type of benefits.
It is possible to support these types of benefits. It's just not possible to do it while also using the public workers' pension fund as a backup piggy bank when the rest of the government budget needs help.
When you dig into these types of stories you almost always find that millions or often billions of dollars have been raided out of the pension fund by the legislature or the executive in order to make their budget numbers look good. Same is true for other publicly-funded initiatives which are always touted as "too expensive" or chronically "underperforming".
Of course, the same is true in the private sector as well, it's just that there at least the leadership has to go through the formality of declaring a bankruptcy in order to raid the pensions and repurpose money to their own preferred projects.
Sometimes this does actually happen, "His predecessor, Gov. Pete Wilson, took $1.6 billion from CalPERS accounts in 1991 to help close a state budget gap." But the overall trend is exactly the opposite.
TFA is called 'The pension gap' for a reason. According to TFA, billions are flowing from general funds into the pension fund to cover the short-fall. $24.6 billion in the last decade, and another projected $20 billion in the decade to come. [1]
When the pension benefits amount to $2.6 million annuity at the day of retirement after 30 years on the job, yes, it is objectively too much of a benefit and unaffordable. If we were talking about an annuity worth just 5% of salary for each year worked, it would be a different story. But $2.6m divided by 30 is $86,666. That is just insane.
It is possible to support these types of benefits. It's just not possible to do it while also using the public workers' pension fund as a backup piggy bank when the rest of the government budget needs help.
When you dig into these types of stories you almost always find that millions or often billions of dollars have been raided out of the pension fund by the legislature or the executive in order to make their budget numbers look good. Same is true for other publicly-funded initiatives which are always touted as "too expensive" or chronically "underperforming".
Of course, the same is true in the private sector as well, it's just that there at least the leadership has to go through the formality of declaring a bankruptcy in order to raid the pensions and repurpose money to their own preferred projects.