POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Pension envy? You wish.

Sorry for the brief hiatus on public pension posts -- it's not that there's no pension action, just that I've been busy.

So let me go back some weeks to an editorial out of St. Louis, proclaiming the current round of public pension kerfuffles is just down to that green-eyed monster envy. The private sector no longer has its defined-benefit pensions and thus want to grab that prize away from the public employees.

In his 2003 book, "Envy," scholar and critic Joseph Epstein relates a joke of the sort that Russians tell on themselves that perfectly captures the meaning of zavist:

"An Englishwoman, a Frenchman, and a Russian are each given a single wish by one of those genies whose almost relentless habit it is to pop out of bottles. The Englishwoman says that a friend of hers has a charming cottage in the Cotswolds, and that she would like a similar cottage, with the addition of two extra bedrooms and a second bath and a brook running in front of it. The Frenchman says that his best friend has a beautiful blonde mistress, and he would like such a mistress himself, but a redhead instead of a blonde, and with longer legs and a bit more in the way of culture and chic. The Russian, when asked what he would like, tells of a neighbor who has a cow that gives a vast quantity of the richest milk, which yields the heaviest cream and the purest butter. 'I vant dat cow,' the Russian tells the genie, 'dead.'"

Lately, whenever we read of another attempt to "reform" pensions, we think of the Russian's cow. Two out of every three private-sector workers in America no longer are covered by traditional pension plans. Such "reform" has contributed to a crisis in retirement security.

That's a sweet idea, if the neighbor didn't get that cow by taking it away from us.

Remember those promises made to the public employees? Whose money is being used to pay for those promises?

Ours. The taxpayers.

We're not envious. We just are tired of having our money taken away, and we don't think we're getting value for that money.

I noted back in April that even though the public union employees could keep taking those golden eggs from the geese, the demography is not to the advantage of continued farming in this manner. The eggs aren't going to be increasing at a rate at which these public servants, who see the public as serving them, will like.

One often hears "Oh, but the average pension amount is $20K! And they don't get Social Security!" (whatever the average may be, and some may or may not receive Social Security payments). But how many years are they receiving? And do they get automatic increases in amount each year? A single year's cost doesn't mean much when you've got a cost that is getting paid out for more than thirty years -- indeed, for more years than the worker served the public.

So smirk at the "pension envy" with its close parallel of "penis envy", but the fact is that these souped-up pensions come out of our pockets. All sorts of crazy investment schemes tried in the name of hiding just how expensive these pension promises were.

The assumption always was that if all else failed, the taxpayers could be soaked to make up the difference.

I think we're about to find out the truth of that statement.

MORE ON THE PENSIONS "CLASS WAR": A short piece in the NY Times with the punchline:

“We have to do what unions call givebacks,” said Mr. Lamm, the former Colorado governor. “That’s the only way to sanity. Any other alternative, therein lies dragons.”

THE OTHER SIDE: John Cole and his Balloon Juice:

And let there be no doubt that there will be a class war over this. Matt Welch and the glibertarian wingnut welfare recipients at Reason have been beating this drum for a while now.

Well, John, there are a couple ways this goes down: taxpayers outnumber the public employees and down go the public benefits; taxpayers are outnumbered by public employees... and there's not enough money to pay for the benefits. Huzzah! It all works out in the end.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.