How did the promise of a stable pension and a happy retirement, once the pillar of the American dream, become a threat to the solvency of state governments across the U.S.? Over the past decade, the funding-gap for public pensions has exploded to record levels. While blame is often placed on politicians short-changing contributions, hardline union leaders, and a host of other factors, one largely misunderstood and ignored component is the management of the pensions themselves. As many of their assets failed to deliver expected returns, pensions doubled-down on high-risk, high-fee investments, hoping to shore up more money. That shift in investments has eroded transparency, which has made it increasingly difficult to follow the money – not only putting at risk the retirement of millions of Americans, but the funding of state budgets and the health of the entire economy. Filmed in New York, Massachusetts, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island and and other locations in 2019 and 2020.
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Reversal of Fortune: Inside Pensions and the Erosion of Retirement
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He can retire in Europe.
Maybe focus less on personal stories and more on the subject matter advertised in the title, you know, the reason people clicked in the first place. Why do so many bloggers or video makers do this? Do you really believe the people who's lives you showcase are so intriguing that we will be grateful you used the old bait and switch on us?
The thing that is not mentionned here is the pension amount was originaly supposed to provide for one pensionner and maybe a spouse. In theory, at 65, your house is paid for and you are debt free.
In reality, today at 65, you are probably still helping out your 2 adult children who at 40 still have not recovered from the 2008 melt down and have still to start a lucrative carrer. You help them with living expanses and debts sush as student loans.
This situation does not end because you turned 65. You still have to spit $10,000 to each each year as you have been doing since 2010.
Imagine the predicament if on top of that your pension is cut by a sustential amount… and you are still expected to help with the grand children's colledge funds like you have been promissing since they were born….
All you need to make a perfect picture are the bills for the seniors care retirement home where your elderly parents in their 90s live. Same for your spouse's parents…
Be careful who you vote for. The government is Full of crooks.
I'm so happy I wasn't born in the US
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from Wall Street, and I’m here to help”.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from Wall Street, and I’m here to help”.
I work for a jurisdiction that is as rich as a small country in the west coast. I choose to retire early to have more active years therefore my pension isn’t big. I started putting $ in 457b soon after I enter this public sector job. Currently it had dropped a lot due to market. However I don’t plan to make scheduled withdrawal until 10 years from now, hopefully it’d bounce back.
Public pension isn’t created equally. Before entering the system, investigate a bit. If you are already in the system, try to change jurisdiction when the talk from coworkers and retirees about pension is negative. Also, pension by itself isn’t enough. Saving into retirement savings account on the side is also a must. Don’t retire with debt (mortgage, car loan, credit card debt, etc.).
We just look at education system that school passed unqualified student to have college diploma and mastera degree diploma without proper evaluation if that student really understand lessons to be learned.
Please do not believe the qualification of those hedge fund managers without proper validation if they study finance and laws that they can handle hedge funds very well in interest of stakeholders.
The problem with people we easy believe financial products without knowing the whole cycle.
Unsubscribed due to ads. I pay youtube premium for zero ads and that is what I expect.
It's really sad. State government officials made promises that they cannot keep. If they want to, they have to tax the young additionally to fulfill those promises. What do the young do? Leave the state -> creating a vicious cycle for the states who have these problems. Those ppl have to go to prison so that future gov't officials don't make such false promises that they cannot keep.
There are life insurance products that people can use to prepare for retirement. Why don't people look into those?
Lots of corruption too.
We are overpopulated,and live for ever!!!! That s the problem!
A friend was told that she should 3 million to retire in a couple of years.
People would, (in general) be far better off putting their pension/investment savings in a vanilla index fund when they start work and by the time they are due to retire will be quite well off, a little bit , invested regularly as well as home ownership is the way to go.
By looking at the chronological patterns of the events on WHEN this retirement crises has started and combining the data with birth rates and the demographic patterns of the entire American population on a year by year basis starting from 1950 to 2021. What we see is the CONFIRMATION of Harry Dent's aging demographic induced-economic decline when the ratio of workers which started at 5 workers per pensioner in 1950 is now at a ratio of 1 worker per pensioner. That ratio is further aggravated by a series of economic crises and government fiscal irresponsibility and by economic industrial policies like planned obsolescence when we should be researching-developing-building-making-manufacturing consumer and industrial consumable and durable products that will last and function as long as it exists so as not to bite into the pensions of pensioners and retirees. And that is what I call as "planned permanence" for all manufactured products and construction products and building products. The same thing also applies in life-supporting infrastructures and economic industrial-supporting technostructures. This is just one of the many factors that must be included into the situation of the retirement crises. Japan is already there, South Korea is just entering it, Germany is half-way into it already BUT THESE KIND OF NEWS IS NOT HITTING THE FRONT PAGE HEADLINES!
In the 1960s and 1950s there are no 401 Ks and IRAs and ROTH IRAs, just Social Security pension plans where all social security taxes and all retirement money goes into. Just one plan. And all of that social security tax money and retirement money goes into (1) Life-Supporting Infrastructures Public Utilities and (2) Economic Industrial National Security Self-Sufficiency Infrastructure. All are government owned and government regulated and government controlled. This ORIGINAL social security financial management-INVESTMENT set up was created by the FDR NEW DEALERS of the 1930s and 1940s but was corrupted gradually in the 1960s and is literally destroyed by a group of young LIBERALS, Bill Clinton among them. In the 1970s , a wave of young liberals. Bill Clinton among them, destroyed the populist Democratic Party they had inherited from the New Dealers of the 1930s. The contours of this ideological fight were complex, but the gist was: Before the 70s, the Democrats were suspicious of big business. They used anti-monopoly policies to fight oligarchy and financial manipulation. Creating competition in open markets, breaking up concentrations of private power, and protecting labor and farmer rights were understood as the essence of ensuring that our commercial society was democratic and protected from big money. Here is a draft of how it once looked like and it was once managed-invested. The 1950s and 1960s are the golden years of REAL RETIREMENT SECURITY for you were young and fresh and dynamic because your American demographics at that time is YOUTHFUL! "YOUTHFUL!"
The (1) are for heavily regulated and policed and and will not be privatized as mandated by government by laws:
(1) water utilities
(2) sewage utilities
(3) power utilities
(4) communication utilities
(5) public transportation utilities
(6) public train utilities
(7) public aircraft utilities
(8) critical toll roads (for expansion and preventive maintenance and preventive repairs)
(9) critical active bridges (for expansion and preventive maintenance and preventive repairs)
(10) basic education schools
The (2) are for heavily regulated and policed and will not be privatized as mandated by government by laws:
(1) basic iron and steel industry
(2) basic machine tool industry
(3) basic heavy engineering industry
(4) basic machine building industry
(5) basic cement industry
(6) basic sand and gravel industry
(7) basic dimension stone quarry industry
(8) basic oil and gas and coal and petrochemical and synthetics industry
(9) basic electrical and electronics industry
(10) basic medical hospitals and clinics
ALL OF THEM WILL BE HEAVILY REGULATED INORDER TO PROTECT THEM FROM WALL STREET PEOPLE.
The (1) is to support and extend human life and to save human life
The (2) is to create a NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY INDUSTRIAL ECONOMIC BASE and to act only as a DETERRENT-DETERRENCE AND AS AN ECONOMIC BUFFER ZONE against all kinds of criminal economic and criminal corporate malpractices and abuse-misuse of economic power by the private sector. Because not everything can be privatized because they are a PUBLIC SERVICE AND ALL PUBLIC SERVICES, BOTH PASSIVE AND ACTIVE IN NATURE WILL PERMANENTLY REMAIN AS PUBLIC ASSETS AND PUBLICLY OWNED AND PUBLICLY MANAGED AND ADMINISTERED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
All of these basic utilities and industrial factories are to be invested into and to expand by the social security taxes and retirement money TO PRODUCE THE STEADY STREAM OF DIVIDENDS TO SUPPORT THE PENSION PLANS AND RETIREMENT PLANS of all Americans.
You wil get something but it won't be impressive
America will choke on 50 million abortions since r v w. Not enough tax flow to support the masses. I'm No economist. Just a question I've pondered.
They need to get rid of pensions. They are just bleeding us taxpayers. If you want to retire, save like we did.
Maybe they should stop taking all those fees out of the pension s funds making funds.mangers, stock brokers rich and pension plans and pensioners poor and homeless…
I was born poor in Detroit. I had to try to sell magazine subscriptions door to door when I was a teen. I know economic "loneliness" very well. There is nothing like ringing a doorbell and being greeted by a tired woman who thinks you are from Mars.
I never had a pension. I never worked for Government. I never received money from a corporation to put into a pension fund. I went to college and paid off my college loans. I was self-employed.
I get tired of people complaining about pensions. You PLAN your own retirement funding from the start. I know teachers who rehabbed rental homes to make sure they had a retirement. They didn't complain about a possible pension loss. They did it like "family projects" with their kids. Their kids turned out very self-sufficient too.
You have to plan for your retirement. Because I never had a pension, I didn't rely on something that I might not get anyway. I'm sorry if you did. But that is not my fault. Quit blaming everyone else. You can plan for your retirement. One of the FIRST things you can do is MOVE out of Democrat run cities. There are thousands of places where you can retire that are vastly cheaper.
Quit complaining and plan.
Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)
what i realize is no one knows anything.
What about those in private sector jobs? I get sick of those with cushy government jobs who think they are too special for their pension to be in a problem situation. It can happen to those in private sector jobs & their attitude is ‘oh, well’ – but if they have a problem, we are suppose to be concerned. Life does not always work out ‘as planned’.
This is both incredibly informative and incredibly frightening.
Hospitals no longer provide a pension. Health care workers are underpaid, risk their lives, and at 60 yrs old when their bodies can't work 40 hrs/week, retire with no pension and no Healthcare insurance. Perhaps nobody should work in Healthcare.
the first mistake you people make, is to set your mind to see yourself still working by the age of retirement.
the second mistake, thinking that you sure are going to live that long
third, thinking that your hard earned money will be safe in someone else's hand.
fourth, thinking that what you save will be enough to retire, it wont even have the same purchasing power by then.
I m not been harsh just because, you have been programed to do what everyone does, without thinking too much about.
Consider this advise, work hard but just while you build a successful business, that will give you cash flow, at least to live comfortable and secure while you are still young and if you make it to old. (real state is one of the best investments) just think for a second, about half of people's salary is spent on rent.
that is just one example.
That not what happen mergers took over the small railroad and stole the pension funds ran companies into ground .did it over again .when it work so well move to steel industry and now have no manufacturing.north east united states.oneonta my had a whole industrial base that fed railroad workers and maintenance of car tracks and equipment . pushed by new York state called urban renewal. Should been called destruction of small businesses
KEEP VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS AND YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING!
AS THE WEALTHY GET RICHER, YOU AND I WILL HAVE TO WORK UNTIL WE DIE! JUST LIKE IT USED TO BE BEFORE SOCIAL SECURITY. THE WEALTHY WANT IT ALL, THEY HAVE TO HAVE THE YACHTS AND MANSIONS.
California Public Employees Retirement PERS invests in vineyards that require cutting down forests in Napa Sonoma Mendocino. Gross.
This is unfair, these guys deserve what they have promised. And we need complete transparency from the financial services sector, if needed please pass a law.
This is straight theft. Wall Street is full of monsters.
Nobody can become financially successful over night. They put in background work but we tend to see the finished part. Fear is a dangerous component, hindering us from taking bold steps we need in other to reach our goals.
What is necessary without pensions is take advantage of saving using 401 k if you start young you may actually do much better!