[Absoutely. If I (age 55) had my life to live over again, I would have stayed far, far away from the private sector.]
May 1, 2005 '55 and Out' Comes Home to Roost By JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON — Intereest rates are ticking up while stock prices are trending down, eroding 401(k) savings. The president says that the Social Security system is in trouble, suggesting that the retirement age must be increased or that benefits must be scaled back for the well-off.
General Motors wants to rein in skyrocketing health costs for retirees. Retired coal miners have lost company-paid health insurance in bankruptcy proceedings. Even robust Fortune 500 companies are groaning under the weight of spiraling retirement costs.
For many middle-age, middle-class workers, retirement planning has become an exercise in high anxiety - except perhaps for a group that makes up about 11 percent of the American work force: public employees. Public employment has always connoted a certain dull stability - the promise of unexciting pay, but a secure pension. That modest idea has expanded over time. With the help of eager-to-please politicians, protective state laws and potent labor unions, many of the nation's state and local employees have only added to their benefits. They receive among the best, most rock-solid pensions and retirement health benefits of any workers in America. Many can retire before 65, with generous cost-of-living adjustments built into their pensions and full medical benefits for life.
More and more of them - the baby boom bulge - are doing just that, leaving states and localities scrambling to pay the cost, at taxpayer expense. In Oregon, state workers who joined the pension system before 1996 are guaranteed an annual 8 percent return on their pension accounts. In Pembroke Pines, Fla., police officers and firefighters can retire after 20 years with 80 percent of their pay. And in Philadelphia, some city workers, including the mayor, are eligible for early pension payments even when they remain on the city payroll. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/weekinreview/01dao.html?pagewanted=print&position=>
Carl