[jkarolyi]

There's a lot of criticism lately of traditional pensions becoming overwhelming burdens for old-industry corporations like the steel mills, airlines, and automakers.

I would like to know how traditional pensions were set up and how they were supposed to work. It sounds like a crazy scheme where companies have a ever-escalating debt to pay to an ever-escalating pool of retired workers. Aren't Social Security and diverse investments supposed to pay for retirement? Why would anyone want to rely on the viability of a single company to pay for their retirement?

How could any sane businessman approve of pensions (or workers rely on them) when they are so obviously going to bleed the company dry eventually? Lots of industries had these pensions up until recently, so I really am curious as to how they were supposed to be sustainable long-term.

To me, they seem like a very hare-brained idea. We taxpayers are now going to fund these lofty, unreasonable pension "promises" when the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. goes bankrupt, which is a certainty at this point.