pensions

Unless pension funds around the nation continue to earn 7% or more per year on their investments, it’s likely that taxpayers will be on the hook for trillions of dollars of promises to government unions.

The Business Roundtable (BR), a group of chief executive officers (CEOs) of some of America’s largest corporations, recently released a statement claiming that businesses have a broader purpose than simply making profit. 

A report issued by Wirepoints shows that the cause of the Illinois public-sector pension crisis has been the staggering increase in the benefits promised to public-sector employees rather than shortfalls in funding of pension systems by taxpayers.

Kentucky currently has one of the largest pension funding gaps of any U.S. state.

Americans seem to have a problem saving for retirement.  This problem has implications for our own lives and for employer-provided pension plans.

A new report published by the Manhattan Institute warns us of an impending crisis: In the coming years, taxpayers will continue to be taxed more heavily to pay for teachers’ retirements, teacher pension debt will keep growing, and children will suffer for it.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, we listen in to an Emerging Issues Forum conference call hosted by MaryAnn McCabe, State Government Relations Manager for The Heartland Institute. The conference call features Brandon Arnold, Executive Vice President of the National Taxpayers Union.

In this episode of the Heartland Institute’s weekly Budget & Tax News podcast, managing editor and research fellow Jesse Hathaway talks with Nelson J. Rockefeller Institute of Government director of fiscal studies Don Boyd about a new study examining how the assumptions and gimmicks public pension boards use to fund pensions are affected by investment risks, and how those risks affect taxpayers and government employees.

In this episode of The Heartland Institute’s weekly Budget & Tax News podcast, managing editor and research fellow Jesse Hathaway talks with Mercatus Center at George Mason University’s State and Local Policy Project scholar Adam Millsap about a new study ranking each US state’s financial health, based on factors such as short- and long-term debt, fiscal obligations, unfunded pensions and entitlement spending.

Unless local and state governments act now, a tsunami of underfunded public pension plan obligations will soon rush ashore and drown taxpayers with tax hikes and crippling debt.

In the race to the financial bottom the State of Illinois vies nicely with several other states, including (depending on the precise year involved) California, New York, and Ohio, with…

The pension system in Illinois is broke, both literally and structurally. According to Bloomberg, while the national median funding ratio for state pension systems is around 71.7 percent (for the…