Rant: Writing governmental retirement footnotes again

The trend of our national deficit can be explained in the reality of what this link represents.   For many, not all, state employees retiring with thirty-years of services equals basically 100 percent of one’s monthly pay for the rest of your life for not working.  This is not in every instance, but it is certainly common.  As the Baby Boomers parade into retirement our state budgets are busting with the economic disparity of repressed market returns for conservative investments as the Federal Reserve represses interest rates to curtail the growth of our national debt.  The collision of allowing defined benefit retirement plans to continue in the governmental sector while they have been deemed virtually extinct in the private sector is key to our economic collapse. 

We are aging and with it health care and the lack of productivity of agencies paying for every two officers employed there is a third who is not working, but being paid because he is retired.  The disparity in these statistics worsens by the day and yet it exists in numbers of the depleted IRA’s to plumbers and the promises to soldiers and teachers.  We are in turmoil of how we dare not phrase questions. 

I am currently preparing the financial statements for a small municipality in my home state.  The taxpayers’ contribution since 2010 has gone from eleven to over thirty-two percent.  The employees’ rate has gone from eight to nine and a half.  Yes we are thankful for our teachers, our police officers, our fire fighters and our administrative clerks and politicians.  Yet we must bear a common paradigm in mathematical sanity.  End defined benefit retirement for government employees now.

http://www.lsprs.state.la.us/benefit-calculator/