The problem isn’t that public-sector workers have too much retirement security.

[Swede]

It’s that everyone else has too little.
For private-sector workers, retirement security is unmistakably eroding. The change is rooted in the shift from “defined benefit” pensions, under which employers guarantee their workers a fixed payment after retirement, to “defined contribution” pensions, such as 401(k) plans, under which employers commit only to contributing a fixed amount that employees must invest on their own.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/pensions-at-risk-in-both-private-and-public-sectors-20110303

[HopeHoops]

1. K&R

[NashVegas]

2. Acquaintances of Mine Are Retiring in Their Mid-50s

The wife is public sector, hubby is private. They delayed telling their friends in their age peer group about it until it was a done deal, fearing backlash.

They lived modestly on their modest income and still live in the house they bought over 20 years ago. Their friends went the other route; made a lot, spent a lot, and have debt up the yin-yang.

[BlueIris]

6. You raise an interesting point. Sometimes the people who retire earliest are those

who prepared to retire at an earlier age.

[suffragette]

3. K&R

[Q3JR4]

4. Unions were instituted to bargain for worker benefits.

If you don't have good benefits or good pay you're probably not represented by a union. If you don't like it you can change the status quo if you're willing to get off your asses and do something about it.

Most people would rather whine.

Q3JR4.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. Today, defined benefit is a detriment to most workers

We do not stay in jobs long enough for defined benefit to kick in. Defined contribution is portable which suit most people these days

[rrneck]

7. In the words of robber baron Jay Gould

You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half.

[kentuck]

8. Right on.

k&r