Thursday, April 7, 2016

Retirement savings: We've got bad news, and worse news

Moody's reports ("Moody's: U.S. pension liabilities moderate in relation to Social Security, Medicare") that government pensions are underfunded by $7 trillion dollars.  (That's "trillion.")  Half of that is for federal pensions and half for state and local pensions.

That amounts to 40% of 2015 GDP.  This is a very big number.

The good (?) news is that this $7 trillion deficit is small when compared to the deficits in social security and medicare.  Social security's deficit is $13.5 trillion, or 75% of GDP, whilst Medicare's deficit is $3.2 trillion, or 18% of GDP.

Added together, the government is underfunded by 133% of GDP.  This compares with with the UK's 66% of GDP and Canada's 12% of GDP.

It is a deep hole; an abyss, in fact.

To access the article, please click on the penguins.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3zRpg2jp6XddWo4UlFNMkhkanM

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