INTRODUCTION
Public employee pensions were originally intended to supplement the retirees’ Social Security benefits and other sources of retirement income. The promise of pensions helped governments recruit skilled employees while also ensuring that retired public employees need not spend their “golden years” in a state of poverty and deprivation. However, such pensions were never intended to enable retired public employees to enjoy a lavish lifestyle at public expense for several decades while the taxpayers and the governments from which the public employees had retired struggled to sustain services while also meeting the pension plans’ unsustainable costs. 

Full Text of "April 2010 – Issue Analysis “Public Employee Pension Reform”" (PDF)
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