[fintstone]

The problem with cutting pension benefits, is to be fair...you have to grandfather the folks that you already promised the pension to...so it takes many years to see the benefits. A good example is the Federal Govt. They have a very lucrative retirement system until the early 80's. They replace it with a system that is roughly half as generous for anyone hired after the cutoff date. The last of the "grandfather folks are retiring now and in the next few years...the more recent hires (starting in about 2 years) retiring in the future will receive less than half as much. The politicians that engineered this in the early 80's are mostly gone and will get little credit (or blame) because they are long gone. We should do the same with social security etc. Personally I cannot believe how lucrative state and local pensions are reported to be on this site. If true, no wonder states are in trouble. The current federal system seems pretty generous at 30% of base pay...although it is contributory and you must work for lower pay than the private sector and stay 30 years to get that much.