From The Denver Post 11.20.2011
As workforce ages, many employers trying to adapt
Posted: 11/20/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/20/2011 01:22:29 AM MST By Greg Griffin
The Denver Post
Robert Mager says he intends to keep developing fraud-awareness seminars for AARP as long as he is able. "More and more people are not ready to throw in the towel and sit in a rocking chair." (Andy Cross, The Denver Post )Bob Mager retired two years ago after a four-decade career in the oil industry and then as a business owner.
But that didn't last long. After a few months, he grew restless, and having taken a few hits from the economy, he needed income. So Mager returned to work full time. The 68-year-old hosts fraud-awareness seminars for AARP ElderWatch, where he had been a volunteer.
"I've got no desire to leave at this point. I'll stay as long as they'll have me and I'm capable of doing it," he said. "Sixty-eight to me is not old. Things have changed. More and more people are not ready to throw in the towel and sit in a rocking chair."
Whether because they want to or they have to, more people who have reached traditional retirement age are continuing to work, either part or full time. That, combined with a steadily aging labor force that's ushering millions of baby boomers toward retirement age, is changing the workplace in ways subtle and profound.
Employers face the dual challenge of preparing for mass retirements while accommodating and getting the most productivity from those who keep working. They also have to ensure that younger workers don't feel their career opportunities are being delayed. Older workers also pose challenges for companies, such as how young bosses and older employees should best interact.
In the workplace, a grayer employee base means that some policies on promotions, pay, benefits and wellness may need to be rethought. Programs such as flex time, for workers of all ages but particularly seniors, and phased retirement are on the rise.
"It's not something companies are paying enough attention to. They tend to have a very short-term focus," said Peter Cappelli, director of the Wharton Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania.
Making proper adjustments
One of the biggest shortcomings in corporations is that younger managers aren't well-trained in managing older employees, he said. A frequent result is that they won't hire an older applicant because they're nervous about managing them, Cappelli said.
Corporate America should look to the military, which has studied the issue and implemented programs to facilitate these boss-report relationships, he said.
Though perceptions are changing, negative stereotypes of older workers persist in the workplace. As a group, they're actually more productive, flexible and skilled, he said.
Nicki Aggers, 61, former manager of compensation consulting for the Mountain States Employers Council in Denver, wanted to retire this year without leaving her employer in the lurch. She stayed on for several months to train her replacement, and then began consulting for the group.
"It keeps my brain active," she said. "My husband retired in January. We wanted more flexibility and to be able to spend more time together. But I didn't want to put them in a bind or leave clients hanging."
The wave of baby boomers reaching retirement age over the next 15 to 18 years has been dubbed the "silver tsunami." The number of workers 65 or older in the U.S. labor force grew 62 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The fastest-growing group was those 75 or older, who nearly doubled their relatively small numbers to just under 1.3 million workers.
Seniors made up about 4 percent of the total workforce in 2008, a number expected to climb to 6.6 percent
(The Denver Post)by 2018. Workers 55 and older, nearly 28 million strong, are expected to climb from less than a fifth of the 2008 workforce to nearly a quarter by 2018.
Concentrations of older workers are higher in some industries. In agriculture, real estate, manufacturing, utilities and public administration, at least 35 percent of workers are over 50, according to a study by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College based on 2007 census data. In these industries, brain drain through mass retirements is a concern.
Driving these changes are long- term trends. Life expectancies have stretched such that many people worry they could outlive their retirement savings. Attitudes about retirement also have changed. The economic downturn has kept many people in their 60s from retiring.
Corporate diversity programs traditionally have focused on race, ethnicity and gender, but age is only now coming to employers' attention. The issue isn't just about seniors. Managers today must contend with four generations — "traditionalists" such as Mager who have led the way into 65-plus employment, baby boomers from about 48 to 65, Generation X'ers from roughly 28 to 47, and Millennials, who are relatively new to the workforce.
Bridging the generations
Wells Fargo has launched several initiatives to improve the workplace for multiple generations, including a series of networking and support groups for various age groups.
The program includes seminars on retirement planning, career development and other topics. It was launched for baby boomers but was so popular that younger workers asked for their own groups. The company set those up too, said Philomena Satre, Wells Fargo's vice president of diversity and inclusion for the Mountain/Midwest region. The program started in the Midwest and is slated to expand nationwide.
"The customer base is all generations, and we want to provide each generation with the best service," Satre said. "From the (employee) perspective, we want people to say, 'I want to work at Wells Fargo and have a career here regardless of my age.' . . . People want to feel like they're valued through their whole career."
In 2007, German auto giant BMW, realizing that its employee base would age significantly during the ensuing decade, set up a production line with demographics matching 2017 projections. The company made 70 adjustments — including adding cushioned flooring, rolling stools and magnifying readers — and was able to match the productivity of other, younger lines.
Not everyone is thrilled that colleagues are working into their senior years. The issue frustrates some younger people.
"I try hard to compete for special projects with people who have been sticking around a long time, but they usually have priority for those positions," said Gino Siller, 29, of Longmont, an air traffic controller with the Federal Aviation Administration. "I'm hitting this dead end while the senior people are getting all the good assignments."
For their part, many boomers say competing with younger workers, particularly in the job search, has only gotten more difficult.
Read more: As workforce ages, many employers trying to adapt - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_19375923#ixzz1eJ0UQRRw
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
How to Grow Our Economy - Two Tax Change Ideas...
See and pass along: http://www.youtube.com/user/capitalconsultingus
Excellent Interview with David Walker - Comeback Amercica
See: http://www.aspeninstitute.org/video/book-talk-featuring-david-walker
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Consider the Math: Social Security + Medicare = Millionaires Next Door Neighbors - WSJ
The Millionaire Retirees Next Door
05.12.2011
Typical retired couples will collect $1 million or more in Social Security and Medicare. This is more than they paid in, and the cost will fall on today's workers..Article Video Comments (667) more in Opinion ».
By JOHN COGAN
Readers may recall the 1950s TV show, "The Millionaire," which portrayed stories of individuals who were given a "no strings attached" gift of money by an anonymous benefactor. Each week in one of the show's opening scenes, a man representing the wealthy benefactor, John Beresford Tipton Jr., knocked on an unsuspecting recipient's door and announced: "My name is Michael Anthony and I have a cashier's check for you for one million dollars."
That TV program is scheduled to return next year as a reality show, and the new recipients will be the typical husband and wife who reach age 66 and qualify for Social Security. Starting next year, this typical couple, receiving the average benefit, will begin collecting a combination of cash and health-care entitlement benefits that will total $1 million over their remaining expected lifetime.
According to my calculations based on government data, such married couples will begin receiving monthly Social Security checks that will, on average, total about $550,000 after inflation. They will receive health-care services paid for by Medicare that, on average, will total another $450,000 after inflation. The benefactors will be a generation of younger workers who are trying to support themselves and their families while paying taxes to finance the rest of government spending.
We cannot even remotely afford to make good on these promised benefits. Although our system of personal liberty, free enterprise and limited government has made us an affluent and upwardly mobile people, we are not yet a nation of John Beresford Tiptons.
The existence of so many million-dollar couples is not the result of elected officials carefully weighing the needs of senior citizens against the financial ability of younger workers to meet these needs. Rather, it is the result of decades of separate legislative actions by both political parties to liberalize retirement and health-care benefits, the sum total of which no one has bothered to calculate.
Social Security and Medicare were the result of natural human impulses to create safety-net programs to prevent poverty in old age and to help needy senior citizens with their medical bills. But the programs are flawed.
In 1978, Congress instituted automatic cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security. That's reasonable. But Social Security's method of automatically increasing benefits to successive cohorts of retirees by more than inflation makes less sense. It means that the average worker who retires this year receives a monthly benefit that is about 23% higher after adjusting for inflation than the monthly benefit received by the average worker who retired 20 years ago. The average worker who retires 10 years from now is, in turn, promised an initial benefit at retirement that is 14% higher after adjusting for inflation than the average worker who retires today.
Under the federal government's fee-for-service Medicare program, every time a senior citizen meets with his physician or health-care provider for a check-up, lab tests or surgery, somebody other than the patient foots most of the bill. That such a program should produce runaway costs is hardly surprising. Over the years, the government has expanded the type of services covered, such as prescription drugs, and it has assumed a greater portion of the program's finances. Medicare premiums paid by senior citizens once covered half of the cost of physician and related services. They now cover one-fourth. Copayments once covered nearly 40% of these services' costs. They now cover only 20%.
To fix Social Security, Congress should start by limiting the increase in benefits of future retirees to the rate of inflation. Congress should then gradually raise Social Security's normal retirement age. Congress should also allow younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes—and create more incentives for them to invest their earnings—in safe, broadly-diversified, stock and bond funds. This would allow younger workers to become millionaires through their own hard work and thrift.
To fix Medicare, we must move away from the current system of fee-for-services and low copayments. First and foremost, copayments should be increased significantly. Medicare recipients need to have more skin in the game if they are to become cost-conscious medical consumers.
The higher copayments can be offset by reducing Medicare premiums and offering more Medicare health plan choices. Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal—to provide fixed annual grants to enable Medicare recipients to buy an affordable private insurance plan—is a fiscally sound way to achieve this outcome. Competition among providers, not government-administered prices and government boards of experts to determine coverage, is the best way to ensure high quality and reasonably priced health care.
Many of the million-dollar couples believe they rightfully deserve the benefits they have been promised. They have, after all, spent all of their working years paying into Social Security and Medicare. And true enough, the typical 66-year old couple and their employers, on their behalf, have contributed nearly $500,000 in payroll taxes (in today's dollars) toward these benefits during their working careers.
But regardless of how much they have contributed, the hard reality is that the federal government has already spent it. No matter how deserving they are, it is younger generations of workers who have to come up with the money.
So today's seniors need to consider how they want the script for "The Millionaire" sequel to be written: There's a knock at the door. We now know that on the other side there's a check for a million dollars. When the door opens, do we really want to see our children, under the commanding gaze of Uncle Sam, presenting us with that check?
Mr. Cogan is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of public policy at Stanford University. He served as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration.
05.12.2011
Typical retired couples will collect $1 million or more in Social Security and Medicare. This is more than they paid in, and the cost will fall on today's workers..Article Video Comments (667) more in Opinion ».
By JOHN COGAN
Readers may recall the 1950s TV show, "The Millionaire," which portrayed stories of individuals who were given a "no strings attached" gift of money by an anonymous benefactor. Each week in one of the show's opening scenes, a man representing the wealthy benefactor, John Beresford Tipton Jr., knocked on an unsuspecting recipient's door and announced: "My name is Michael Anthony and I have a cashier's check for you for one million dollars."
That TV program is scheduled to return next year as a reality show, and the new recipients will be the typical husband and wife who reach age 66 and qualify for Social Security. Starting next year, this typical couple, receiving the average benefit, will begin collecting a combination of cash and health-care entitlement benefits that will total $1 million over their remaining expected lifetime.
According to my calculations based on government data, such married couples will begin receiving monthly Social Security checks that will, on average, total about $550,000 after inflation. They will receive health-care services paid for by Medicare that, on average, will total another $450,000 after inflation. The benefactors will be a generation of younger workers who are trying to support themselves and their families while paying taxes to finance the rest of government spending.
We cannot even remotely afford to make good on these promised benefits. Although our system of personal liberty, free enterprise and limited government has made us an affluent and upwardly mobile people, we are not yet a nation of John Beresford Tiptons.
The existence of so many million-dollar couples is not the result of elected officials carefully weighing the needs of senior citizens against the financial ability of younger workers to meet these needs. Rather, it is the result of decades of separate legislative actions by both political parties to liberalize retirement and health-care benefits, the sum total of which no one has bothered to calculate.
Social Security and Medicare were the result of natural human impulses to create safety-net programs to prevent poverty in old age and to help needy senior citizens with their medical bills. But the programs are flawed.
In 1978, Congress instituted automatic cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security. That's reasonable. But Social Security's method of automatically increasing benefits to successive cohorts of retirees by more than inflation makes less sense. It means that the average worker who retires this year receives a monthly benefit that is about 23% higher after adjusting for inflation than the monthly benefit received by the average worker who retired 20 years ago. The average worker who retires 10 years from now is, in turn, promised an initial benefit at retirement that is 14% higher after adjusting for inflation than the average worker who retires today.
Under the federal government's fee-for-service Medicare program, every time a senior citizen meets with his physician or health-care provider for a check-up, lab tests or surgery, somebody other than the patient foots most of the bill. That such a program should produce runaway costs is hardly surprising. Over the years, the government has expanded the type of services covered, such as prescription drugs, and it has assumed a greater portion of the program's finances. Medicare premiums paid by senior citizens once covered half of the cost of physician and related services. They now cover one-fourth. Copayments once covered nearly 40% of these services' costs. They now cover only 20%.
To fix Social Security, Congress should start by limiting the increase in benefits of future retirees to the rate of inflation. Congress should then gradually raise Social Security's normal retirement age. Congress should also allow younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes—and create more incentives for them to invest their earnings—in safe, broadly-diversified, stock and bond funds. This would allow younger workers to become millionaires through their own hard work and thrift.
To fix Medicare, we must move away from the current system of fee-for-services and low copayments. First and foremost, copayments should be increased significantly. Medicare recipients need to have more skin in the game if they are to become cost-conscious medical consumers.
The higher copayments can be offset by reducing Medicare premiums and offering more Medicare health plan choices. Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal—to provide fixed annual grants to enable Medicare recipients to buy an affordable private insurance plan—is a fiscally sound way to achieve this outcome. Competition among providers, not government-administered prices and government boards of experts to determine coverage, is the best way to ensure high quality and reasonably priced health care.
Many of the million-dollar couples believe they rightfully deserve the benefits they have been promised. They have, after all, spent all of their working years paying into Social Security and Medicare. And true enough, the typical 66-year old couple and their employers, on their behalf, have contributed nearly $500,000 in payroll taxes (in today's dollars) toward these benefits during their working careers.
But regardless of how much they have contributed, the hard reality is that the federal government has already spent it. No matter how deserving they are, it is younger generations of workers who have to come up with the money.
So today's seniors need to consider how they want the script for "The Millionaire" sequel to be written: There's a knock at the door. We now know that on the other side there's a check for a million dollars. When the door opens, do we really want to see our children, under the commanding gaze of Uncle Sam, presenting us with that check?
Mr. Cogan is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of public policy at Stanford University. He served as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Hope is Not An Investment Strategy - Blaine Rollins
Guest Commentary: Hope is not an investment strategy
By Blaine Rollins
Posted: 05/11/2011 01:00:00 AM MDT
The Public Employees' Retirement Association of Colorado is responsible for 450,000 current and future retirees, so it would be tragic for PERA's investment assets to run out — not just for its members, but also for the Colorado economy. Unfortunately, our state government leaders have tethered the fortunes of PERA to "return" assumptions they predict will run like Secretariat. By the time they realize that the 1970s super horse can't be matched, it may be too late to avoid disaster.
Municipal Defined Benefit Pension accounting is extremely complex — and easily manipulated. When I recently studied municipal financial accounting, it became clear that I could draw up any end result I wanted, given small changes in the pension assumptions.
The most abused area of municipal pension accounting? The "discount rate" used for future pension obligations. This is the interest rate assumption used to "discount back" all the future guaranteed payments to retirees. Corporations typically use a conservative discount rate to ensure there's no shortfall in the funds that make up an individual's future, defined benefit payments. For example, AT&T uses a 5.8 percent discount rate, Procter & Gamble 5 percent. Municipal pension accounting is more aggressive. Currently, most states are using a 7.5 percent to 8 percent estimate. In Colorado, PERA is at 8 percent. But the probability of making 8 percent per year for the next 30 years on a $38 billion investment fund is slim.
So why do Colorado's elected officials allow such aggressive accounting to be applied to our state's largest liability? Maybe because the PERA plan has outperformed the 8 percent benchmark by 1 percent over the past 25 years. Perhaps, but over the past 25 years the U.S. economy had significant economic tailwinds that were great for stocks and venture capital investments. Also, falling inflation has benefited bonds and fixed payment investments. Those easy gains in bond prices could be a thing of the past as the dollar continues to depreciate and commodity prices move higher. America's debt will cause its economic growth to be more constrained, causing stock and private equity returns to be lower.
Colorado should use pension assumptions that more accurately estimate future liabilities. True, a change in PERA's discount rate from 8 percent on 2009 financials to 5.5 percent on 2010 financials would raise its total pension liability from $56 billion to about $77 billion. And given $37.5 billion in PERA investment assets at the end of 2010, this would put the funded ratio at 48.7 percent, much lower than the 2009 stated funded ratio of 67.2 percent. But it also marks a starting point of conservatism for everyone in Colorado to help ensure that state contributions into the fund remain high enough now that we'll have a funded retirement plan later.
As we say in the investment world, "Hope is not an investment strategy." Betting PERA member retirement plans and Colorado taxpayers' future on a 30-year, 8 percent return assumption is fiscally irresponsible. With no changes to state or member contributions or benefits, it is easy to see how the PERA assets will fall to zero in the next decade. At that point, Colorado will either need to stop all payment to PERA retirees or raise taxes significantly. Both roads could lead to a collapse in the Colorado economy.
Colorado is looking at a $40 billion underfunded pension liability. This works out to be $17,000 per taxpayer should the plan fail. Colorado needs to come clean with taxpayers and admit that this is the true amount of pension debt. State leaders are betting our public employees' future retirement, and all of our personal and business investments into Colorado, that PERA will return more than 8 percent annually for the next 30 years.
I don't want to be the one to tell Colorado teachers they will not get their retirement check because the state's accounting assumption was too aggressive. But as of today, our leaders at the Capitol are making that bet.
Blaine Rollins is a managing director of 361 Capital and former portfolio manager of the Janus Fund.
Read more: Guest Commentary: Hope is not an investment strategy - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_18035453#ixzz1M4U3eEIN
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
By Blaine Rollins
Posted: 05/11/2011 01:00:00 AM MDT
The Public Employees' Retirement Association of Colorado is responsible for 450,000 current and future retirees, so it would be tragic for PERA's investment assets to run out — not just for its members, but also for the Colorado economy. Unfortunately, our state government leaders have tethered the fortunes of PERA to "return" assumptions they predict will run like Secretariat. By the time they realize that the 1970s super horse can't be matched, it may be too late to avoid disaster.
Municipal Defined Benefit Pension accounting is extremely complex — and easily manipulated. When I recently studied municipal financial accounting, it became clear that I could draw up any end result I wanted, given small changes in the pension assumptions.
The most abused area of municipal pension accounting? The "discount rate" used for future pension obligations. This is the interest rate assumption used to "discount back" all the future guaranteed payments to retirees. Corporations typically use a conservative discount rate to ensure there's no shortfall in the funds that make up an individual's future, defined benefit payments. For example, AT&T uses a 5.8 percent discount rate, Procter & Gamble 5 percent. Municipal pension accounting is more aggressive. Currently, most states are using a 7.5 percent to 8 percent estimate. In Colorado, PERA is at 8 percent. But the probability of making 8 percent per year for the next 30 years on a $38 billion investment fund is slim.
So why do Colorado's elected officials allow such aggressive accounting to be applied to our state's largest liability? Maybe because the PERA plan has outperformed the 8 percent benchmark by 1 percent over the past 25 years. Perhaps, but over the past 25 years the U.S. economy had significant economic tailwinds that were great for stocks and venture capital investments. Also, falling inflation has benefited bonds and fixed payment investments. Those easy gains in bond prices could be a thing of the past as the dollar continues to depreciate and commodity prices move higher. America's debt will cause its economic growth to be more constrained, causing stock and private equity returns to be lower.
Colorado should use pension assumptions that more accurately estimate future liabilities. True, a change in PERA's discount rate from 8 percent on 2009 financials to 5.5 percent on 2010 financials would raise its total pension liability from $56 billion to about $77 billion. And given $37.5 billion in PERA investment assets at the end of 2010, this would put the funded ratio at 48.7 percent, much lower than the 2009 stated funded ratio of 67.2 percent. But it also marks a starting point of conservatism for everyone in Colorado to help ensure that state contributions into the fund remain high enough now that we'll have a funded retirement plan later.
As we say in the investment world, "Hope is not an investment strategy." Betting PERA member retirement plans and Colorado taxpayers' future on a 30-year, 8 percent return assumption is fiscally irresponsible. With no changes to state or member contributions or benefits, it is easy to see how the PERA assets will fall to zero in the next decade. At that point, Colorado will either need to stop all payment to PERA retirees or raise taxes significantly. Both roads could lead to a collapse in the Colorado economy.
Colorado is looking at a $40 billion underfunded pension liability. This works out to be $17,000 per taxpayer should the plan fail. Colorado needs to come clean with taxpayers and admit that this is the true amount of pension debt. State leaders are betting our public employees' future retirement, and all of our personal and business investments into Colorado, that PERA will return more than 8 percent annually for the next 30 years.
I don't want to be the one to tell Colorado teachers they will not get their retirement check because the state's accounting assumption was too aggressive. But as of today, our leaders at the Capitol are making that bet.
Blaine Rollins is a managing director of 361 Capital and former portfolio manager of the Janus Fund.
Read more: Guest Commentary: Hope is not an investment strategy - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_18035453#ixzz1M4U3eEIN
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Next Hundred Million - Joel Kotkin
A GREAT Book for those who are interested in the future, and want to have a Bigger Future !
If you are impatient, or do not want to invest the time reading the book, a good brief is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7o0IwvpySk
Joel is a good thinker, provides a balanced perspective, desiring to make our country and your future better. Thanks Joel.
If you are impatient, or do not want to invest the time reading the book, a good brief is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7o0IwvpySk
Joel is a good thinker, provides a balanced perspective, desiring to make our country and your future better. Thanks Joel.
Denver Post on PERA and Public Employment
My Letter to the Author of a couple of articles in today's edition (04.10.2011)
Tim,
Thank you for your articles in today's Denver Post. You brought light and insight to some of the issues in this current debate.
I suggest some investigative journalism looking into the 'open education on how to scam PERA' is taught to pre-retirees. The powerful union NEA instructs teachers who are approaching or considering retirement to 'scam the system' by grossing up their final three years of employment! For instance, a teacher who is working part time gets credit in years of service for their employment, yet if they go to full time in their final three years, this higher than average income is what is used to calculate their retirement (possibly for 30 - 40 years of pension income). Additionally, they are 'coached to bank their sick days and vacation days' thereby getting additional 'credit' for this time, further inflating the employee compensation that is used for the pension benefit. Does that make sense ???
Rules like this at PERA allowing this kind of behavior and public unions like the NEA that promote scamming the system only add to the struggle to maintain a promise to retirees. Your readers deserve more light on this behavior.
Also of interest, just a decade ago, when PERA was 'fully funded', in other words, had more than enough money, the IRS forced them to raise the benefit or pay taxes to the Federal Government. Now does that make sense ???
No wonder PERA is upside down - paying out more than they should, and for a longer period of time, escalating at un-sustainable rates.
No wonder taxpayers are furious.
See my blogspot: 'Doubt of the Benefit'
Steve Booren
Founder/Owner - Capital Consulting
Greenwood Village, CO
Tim,
Thank you for your articles in today's Denver Post. You brought light and insight to some of the issues in this current debate.
I suggest some investigative journalism looking into the 'open education on how to scam PERA' is taught to pre-retirees. The powerful union NEA instructs teachers who are approaching or considering retirement to 'scam the system' by grossing up their final three years of employment! For instance, a teacher who is working part time gets credit in years of service for their employment, yet if they go to full time in their final three years, this higher than average income is what is used to calculate their retirement (possibly for 30 - 40 years of pension income). Additionally, they are 'coached to bank their sick days and vacation days' thereby getting additional 'credit' for this time, further inflating the employee compensation that is used for the pension benefit. Does that make sense ???
Rules like this at PERA allowing this kind of behavior and public unions like the NEA that promote scamming the system only add to the struggle to maintain a promise to retirees. Your readers deserve more light on this behavior.
Also of interest, just a decade ago, when PERA was 'fully funded', in other words, had more than enough money, the IRS forced them to raise the benefit or pay taxes to the Federal Government. Now does that make sense ???
No wonder PERA is upside down - paying out more than they should, and for a longer period of time, escalating at un-sustainable rates.
No wonder taxpayers are furious.
See my blogspot: 'Doubt of the Benefit'
Steve Booren
Founder/Owner - Capital Consulting
Greenwood Village, CO
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