Re: BT, a pension scheme with a telecommunications provider attached to it
I recall an article a while back on unfunded local government pensions, roughly 25% of your council tax payments goes to paying current retirees (YMMV). Its only going to get worse.
Seems unlikely. The largest scheme by far is LGPS, which is fully funded. If all its members stopped paying into it today, it could still meet all its obligations for the next 20 years.
That quote of 25% has the look of a headline shock value of the sort you'll see in the Daily Mail. People see that and automatically think 'Only 3/4 of council cash is being spent on me and the services I need!', not pausing to think that councils get central government grants, have investments of their own (well, mostly) and also raise money from business rates and car parking, etc (one or two even still get rents from council house tenants!). It's always more complicated than one figure suggests. After all, if retirees didn't have any reasonable pension income, sooner or later some of them would end up on the street and the council would be required to house them...
I agree with you that the situation is going to get worse, though. Just look at how much private pensions have been devalued over the last 25 years.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
