Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Pensions! As we do most weeks, we have gathered the best stories about pensions and retirement security from the previous week. This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement.
Here are this week’s top stories:
- Wall Street caused pension crisis, not cops and firefighters by Wayne Harris: a lot of blame gets tossed around for the underfunding of public pensions in California. Harris writes to the Sacramento Bee to correct the record about the true causes of the underfunding. As he says, union critics often give Wall Street a pass while blaming hard-working public employees.
- This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like by Alana Semuels: writing in The Atlantic, Semuels highlights the plight of seniors forced to work into old age due to a lack of retirement savings. As more and more Baby Boomers retire without pensions and with inadequate savings, they are forced to either continue working or dramatically lower their standard of living. Eliminating pensions for public employees would only exacerbate this already growing retirement savings crisis.
- Republican lawmakers tout their pension bill; KY Public Pension Coalition calls it “unacceptable” by Tom Latek: Republican legislators in Kentucky finally released their long-awaited pension bill this week. After months of secretive meetings with no input from public employees or other stakeholders, the legislators proposed changes that would seriously weaken retirement security for teachers and other public employees. Calling the bill “unacceptable”, the Kentucky Public Pension Coalition said, “We are very concerned about many aspects of the bill that harm dedicated public servants, including unfairly reducing the benefits they have earned.”
Also this week, we released our new animated whiteboard video exposing John Arnold and his web of connections. Be sure to watch our video below and then visit ProtectPensions.org/Arnold to learn more.
Be sure to check back next week for the latest news in the fight for a secure retirement!