Online Resource: Setting the Record Straight About Public Pensions
The media are full of daily denunciations of the alleged excesses and shortcomings of public pension funds. The problem is, these denunciations make selective use of statistics in service to a right-wing agenda of reducing the ability of government to help its citizens, redistributing income from workers to corporations and the wealthy, and redirecting blame for the economic crisis from the abuses of Wall Street and corporations to public employees. As Mark Twain famously quoted, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
In his piece "Setting the Record Straight About Public Pensions" from the February, 2011 issue of Government Finance Review, Leigh Snell of the National Council on Teacher Retirement addresses the various allegations about public pension funds and explains how they largely misrepresent, distort and obfuscate their true condition.
This well-researched, footnoted article reviews each critique of pension funds and answers the questions these critiques raise:
- Aren't our pension funds running out of money?
- Aren't pension funds "cooking the books?"
- Aren't pension funds causing the state and local government fiscal crisis?
- And why should public employees have the most expensive type of pension fund?
Read the report as a PDF here.
