> many jobs... millions upon millions

...no. It doesn't even matter what the rest of the words in the question are. Just no, lol.

> They need to be paid out somehow.

No they don't. Lots of pensions, especially the not-gilded ones, go bankrupt.

In fact, that's precisely what happens to pensions of companies that are acquired by PE. The company gets stripped for parts, it goes bankrupt, and PBGC covers a fraction of the affected pensioners' payouts.

In other words, with or without PE, bloated pensions ultimately end up being the taxpayer's burden.

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iboisvert 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> bloated pensions

I find this characterization offensive. Who is to judge if the defined benefit pension if a primary school teacher or fireman, for example, is bloated? It's part of the negotiated pay package, nothing more or less.

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throwforfeds 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At least here in NYC, a large part of a NYPD officer's pension is calculated based on a 3-year look back from their retirement date, so there is a huge incentive to work as much overtime as possible in order to bump that number in your last few years of service. There are lots of stories of NYPD handing out easy overtime in massive numbers for each other, particularly when they are about to retire.

Teachers are the easy ones to point to, it is hard to be mad at an underpaid teacher who receives a reasonable pension for life. We certainly can be mad at NYPD scamming the system to get $100-200k/year for life.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-nyc-police-overtime-...

[2] https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/newly-retired-nypd...

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Twistyfiasco 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At least in my union defined benefit pension it specifically excludes overtime since that obviously is ripe for abuse. It's just your basic calculation: average of your best 5 years of salary at 2% per year of service.

Is that not the case for police unions in the states?

	▲	brianwawok 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Normally includes overtime and only the best few years. Can juice it to get a pension around your 40 hour salary for life.

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freejazz 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All seem trivial compared to the money sucked up by billionaires, who seem to do little good for society. I'm not going to get angry at a police officer trying to maximize their retirement when we live in a society that celebrates people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

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ryukoposting 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My mom's a teacher. She would get a pension if the state could actually fund its pension program, which it can't now, and certainly won't when she retires in a few years. The government ones tend to actually have, yknow, morals and stuff.

Nothing personal here. It's possible for some pensions to suck and not others. It's also possible for a pension to suck and its beneficiaries to not suck.

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MichaelZuo 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you confused?

Why are you replying to a comment where you believe the words “doesn’t even matter”?