Retirees In Action

TALKING PENSIONS — State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is greeted by Steve Muscarella at the 30th annual PEF convention in Rochester September 15.

NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli assured delegates to the 2008 PEF convention in September that our state pensions are 100 percent funded. Considering the financial upheaval this country is dealing with, this is good news.

NY state retirees who qualify for a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to their pensions are now receiving a bit more in their pension checks.

Seniors, however, will bear the burden of the meltdown in the financial markets and suffer more than many other segments of the population. And retired public employees in New York state have an additional disadvantage.

Unlike our Social Security retirement benefits which grow by the full annual CPI (Consumer Price Index – a measure of inflation), our NY state pension COLA is based on just half of the CPI. And it’s applied to just the first $18,000 of our annual pensions.

A government bailout of Wall Street will increase substantially our monumental national debt. That will generate greater inflation and continue to diminish the purchasing power of our pensions.

Add to that the loss of individual savings and retirement accounts because of huge reversals in the equity markets, the loss of dividend and interest income and the decrease of our net worth because of the housing crisis.

According to The New York Times, not since World War II have the elderly in America had less savings. We’re living longer, so we must stretch our savings further, and we are more exposed to market risks.

A federal government with such a huge debt won’t have more money to put into our entitlement programs. Medicare is projected to go broke by 2017, while the elderly population is expected to double in the next 25 years. How will we be able to afford adequate medical coverage?

The number of older Americans seeking the protection of bankruptcy has skyrocketed.

Unscrupulous behavior and unbridled greed in an unregulated economy combined with out-of-control government spending and lacks of accountability and consumer protection is a formula for economic disaster.

We need honorable, intelligent officeholders to lead us out of the worst fiscal mess since the Depression. Hopefully, our new elected leaders will be up to it.

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