Working for the rest of your life

Companies are backing out of pension obligations, freezing pension benefits or dropping their pension programs altogether to reduce costs, dumping billions of dollars in retirement obligations on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the government's pension insurance program. This is the result of myopic thinking - companies neglecting to fund their pension plans, sometimes having taken a five to ten year contribution holiday, in order to pad their pockets in the short term.

The biggest incentive to underfund pension plans is in the opportunity to offload costs onto the goverment. The problem is that the PBGC already has a deficit in excess of twenty three billion dollars. While the government bails out the private sector, robbing Peter to pay Paul, who will bail out the government? Taxpayers. Don't worry, though, the workforce should be large enough to swing this with fewer people retiring, provided the job market is in a constant state of expansion.

Their is obviously a flaw here. As pensions disappear, so does social security for the aging worker. As life expectancy rates increase, it becomes more difficult to put away enough money to retire on. The bottom line is that the great majority of workers won't be able to afford to retire. Age descrimination laws may help them keep their jobs, but that choice will be one of necessity, not of preference.

Worker resentment will undoubtedly become a challenging issue to address in the workforce. The fallout will not only compound health costs, but also put a strain on the revolving door of retirees/hirees. With the log jam of older workers, unemployment will rise without the creation of new jobs ON TOP of the existing ones. The gap between the rich and the poor will continue to widen. Crime rates will soar. The rest is too scary to think about...