In the US, many pension plans are hopelessly underwater as the economy heads into troubled times. State employee pension plan are $1 trillion in the red, local government employee pensions are nearly $500 billion in deficit, and even employer-funded pensions (buoyed by rising stock and bond markets) are showing problems. Of course the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare fiasco is showing red ink for as far as the eye can see. The combination of overly generous benefits and demographically declining tax bases means that there will have to be severe benefit cuts down the road.
In the Netherlands the pension system seems to work much better. Employee contributions are high, employer contributions are low, and each generation is expected to pay for its own benefits. The pensions themselves are required to faithfully assess the status of their financial conditions and if shortfalls arise, as they did in the 2008 financial crisis, then benefits are cut and contributions are raised to keep the system solvent on an ongoing financial basis. The payout is approximately 70% of your earned income rather than the 40% that Social Security pays. According to Mary Williams Walsh:
The Dutch say their approach is, in fact, supposed to prevent a crisis — the crisis that will ensue if the boomer generation retires without fully funded benefits. Their $1.05 minimum is really just a minimum; pension funds are encouraged to keep an even bigger surplus, to help them weather market shocks. The Dutch sailed into the global collapse of 2008 with $1.45 for every dollar of benefits owed, far more than they appeared to need. But when the dust settled, they were down to just 90 cents. The damage was so bad that the central bank gave them a breather: They had five years to get back to the $1.05 minimum, instead of the usual three. American public plans emerged from the crisis in worse shape, on the whole, and many allowed themselves 30 years to recover. But 30 years is so long that the boomer generation will have retired by then, and the losses will have been pushed far into the future for others to repay. It’s a recipe for disaster if the employer happens to be a city like Detroit. The city’s pension system used a 30-year schedule to cover losses but reset it at “Year 1” every year, a tactic employed in a surprising number of places. In Detroit, it meant the city never replaced the money that the pension system lost. When Detroit finally declared bankruptcy last year, an outside review found a $3.5 billion shortfall, one of the biggest claims of the bankruptcy. Manipulating the 30-year funding schedule had helped to hide it.
