Regarding the article “Amid $41B shortfall, Pennsylvania teachers’ pension cites private equity as biggest drag” (July 1, TribLive): I’m ready to throw up. This has been in the making for over 30 years starting with that 25% pension increase for teachers and judges.
Around the same period my company, a large corporation at the time, was told by the government pension watchdogs that it was significantly underfunded and they had to do something to fix it. No problem. The government just allowed them to reduce the pension multiplier … problem solved, and lower, fixed pension for me when my time came.
Not so with public employees. Why? Why are the producers, the people who pay for government, supposed to provide something they don’t have themselves?
Here’s a fair and simple start: Just reduce the pension multiplier by 25% and, in the long term, make public employee pensions on par with non-public entities.
Bruce Cox
Springdale