Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Pensions! This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement. We have gathered the top stories about pensions and retirement security from the previous week.
NPPC Highlight
Have you seen our most recent blog, Fortifying The Golden Years: The Three-Legged Stool of Retirement Security? Read our latest blog to learn why pensions, social security, and personal savings are essential for a stable and worry-free retirement.
Also, be on the lookout for our next blog post on the newly established, shady group, Secure Illinois Retirement, later this month.
Opponents continue the “sky is falling” narrative.
This week the right-wing Washington Examiner highlighted a recent report by the Equable Institute on pension unfunded liabilities across the United States. We’ve written extensively about the anti-pension Equable Institute in the past, and their new report is much of the same. Equable continues to push a “sky is falling” narrative that focuses on the unfunded liabilities. Specifically, in his piece, Wilson focuses on the unfunded liabilities of pension plans in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Alabama. Unfunded liabilities occur when there is a difference between the total amount of benefits owed to ALL current employees and retirees and the value of the financial assets the pension plan manages. This means that at a specific point in time, the pension plan does not have the full amount of money it will need to pay ALL of the retirement benefits it will owe in the future to ALL of its current and former employees. But since employees don’t all retire at this same time, this is a false expectation.
To scare the reader, Wilson compares the unfunded liabilities of each state’s plan to the state’s GDP. These types of comparisons aim to make the reader think that all of this money is due right now when in fact, it is not. Readers should be cautious when anti-pension groups like the Equable Institute create narratives to scare the public and state lawmakers into taking action that will be detrimental to their states’ finances.
Be sure to check back next Friday for the latest in the fight for a secure retirement! In the meantime, you can sign up for NPPC News Clips to receive daily pension news from across the country directly to your inbox.
