The Defined Benefit

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  • Pension cuts harm public employee recruitment
    pension cuts

    The financial crisis and Great Recession had a devastating effect on public pension plans. On average, public pension plans lost about a quarter of the value of their assets due to the crisis. In the years since the recession, almost…

  • Tax Day and Public Pensions: Your Questions Answered
    Tax Day and public pensions

    Today is Tax Day. We thought this would be a good time to re-post a blog post from two years ago that answered the question: how many tax dollars go to public pensions? Taxpayer contributions to public pensions represent a…

  • Kentucky Must Fix Its Porous Tax Code
    Kentucky pensions

    Today we are resharing a post from September 2017 about a report from Good Jobs First, a national nonpartisan organization that tracks economic development programs. Their report found that Kentucky gives away far more each year through corporate subsidies and…

  • A stinking piece of legislation guts pensions in Kentucky
    Kentucky pensions

    The fight to protect pensions in Kentucky has been long and drawn-out. Despite months of promises, Governor Bevin never called a special legislative session last year to address tax reform and public pensions. Earlier this year, members of the Kentucky…

  • Who is the Retirement Security Initiative?
    Retirement Security Initiative

    Since beginning his crusade against public pensions, John Arnold has been relentless in his attacks on retirement security for working families. Often, he pays others to do his dirty work for him. For example, he funds biased research from the…

  • Public Pensions Help Recruit New Teachers
    public pensions for teachers

    Following the successful strike of teachers in West Virginia for higher pay, there has been increased focus on the longstanding issue of low pay and benefits for public school teachers. This is a critical issue that we’ve discussed before. One…

  • The Fight to Protect Pensions in Colorado
    Colorado-Pensions-NPPC

    As we’ve discussed plenty of times, politicians will often attack public pensions for their own political gain. There is a perfect example of this in Colorado, where the state treasurer, Walker Stapleton, is using attacks on public pensions to fuel…

  • The fight to protect pensions in Kentucky: an update
    Kentucky pensions

    Last month, Kentucky State Senator Joe Bowen introduced Senate Bill 1, legislation that would make harsh, unnecessary changes to Kentucky’s public pension plans. SB1 was the long-awaited pension bill that had been promised for months by Republican legislative leaders in…

  • Middle-Class Families Could Be Retiring Into Poverty
    retirement poverty

    In a blog post last week, we discussed the fact that many Americans plan to work in retirement just to make ends meet. As we’ve mentioned before, though, many people won’t be able to continue working in retirement and may…

  • Many Americans plan to work in retirement
    Working during retirement

    Once there was a time in America when retirement meant enjoying your golden years. It could be taking a long-awaited trip, volunteering in your community, or spending time with the grandkids. Retirement, however, did not mean continuing to work. Unfortunately,…

  • Millennials Already Falling Behind in Retirement Savings
    Gen Z

    We’ve spent a lot of time on this blog discussing the plight of working families struggling to save for retirement. It’s a challenge for many Americans to save for retirement with the decline of pensions in the private sector and…

  • There is finally a pension bill in Kentucky and it’s bad
    pension cuts

    For months now, public employees and retirees in Kentucky have awaited the introduction of a pension bill. Republican legislators have been promising that the introduction of a pension bill is just days away, but they never ended up releasing anything-…