Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Pensions! As we do most weeks, we have gathered the best stories about pensions and retirement security from the previous week. This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement.

Here are this week’s top stories:

  • Teachers, school districts take hit while corporate welfare thrives by JoAnn Adams: a retired teacher in Kentucky laments the actions of the state legislature this year. The Kentucky General Assembly gutted retirement security for public employees while cutting taxes even more for the wealthy and profitable corporations. “The changes that were made by our lawmakers will have a lasting impact on our commonwealth for years to come. Most of these changes will hurt our communities in the name of corporate tax breaks,” Adams writes.
  • Income inequality is going to hit tomorrow’s retirees hard by Michael Hiltzik: columnist Hiltzik writes in the LA Times about a recent report from the Center for Retirement Research. As income inequality increases, inequality in retirement savings increases with it. “Income inequality is no myth, and neither is the retirement crisis,” Hiltzik writes. “The first is with us now, and the latter is what most of us face in the future.”
  • Autopsy of a Retirement Plan by James Russell: a retired university professor analyzes his own retirement savings and documents how his defined contribution plan failed to provide him with a secure retirement. “Together, my projected Social Security and employee retirement plan would amount to just 43.5 percent of my final income… Something had gone terribly wrong.”

We’ll be off next week, but be sure to check back in the weeks ahead for the latest news in the fight for a secure retirement!