Possible Pension Overhaul Has Veterans Nervous

In a long-overdue moment, governor Jerry Brown has finally admitted the obvious, the state's pension system is broke and California Has "Lived Beyond Our Means". Unions of course are howling at that obvious admission.

California Governor Jerry Brown has reached a deal with legislators to overhaul the state's pension system. The changes include capping annual pension payments, requiring new employees to pay 50 percent of their pension costs and raising the retirement age. The package will save the state about $30 billion.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Puerto Rico's governor has signed an overhaul of the U.S. territory's cash-short public pension system that lawmakers passed late on Thursday in a bid to soothe investors and shore up the country's sputtering economy. The new pension law will raise the retirement age for some state workers, increase worker contributions to the plan and lower monthly pensions and benefits for some public workers. It will also reduce state workers' Christmas bonuses and eliminate summer bonus ...

Guest blog post by Melissa Chiu, Chief of the Industry and Occupation Statistics Branch, U.S. Census BureauAs we honor those soldiers who have given their lives to their country this Memorial Day, we can also take the opportunity to better understand America’s veterans. The American Community Survey provides a profile of our 21.8 million veterans.So, who are our veterans in America? U.S. veterans are made up of every gender, race, ethnicity and almost every age group. There were more women veterans in 2010 than twenty years ago; this group has grown by 3 percentage points since 1980 to 1.6 million in 2010.  It is important to recognize that women constitute 19 percent of veterans in the age group 18 to 34.  There were 9 million veterans 65 and older in 2010 and, at the other end of the age spectrum, 1.7 million were younger than 35. We find that veterans age 18 to 34 are more racially and ethnically diverse than older veterans. Non-Hispanic whites account for 17.5 million veterans. In addition there were 2.4 million black veterans, 1.2 million Hispanics, 265,000 Asians, 157,000 American Indians or Alaska Natives and 28,000 Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders in 2010.

The government is considering a "radical" overhaul of the state pension to ensure everybody has a "decent" income in retirement, says Vince Cable.

Labor unions vowed to amplify their protests against France's plans to increase the retirement age after President Nicolas Sarkozy said he wouldn't give in on elements of a proposed pension overhaul.

French unions expect two million protesters to demonstrate against the government's pension-overhaul plans, confronting head-on the central plank of President Sarkozy's fiscal changes.