Comments about ‘In our opinion: Utah's retirement audit’

That was the same message Detroit received several years ago, Don't worry, be happy. Unfunded or at risk retirement plans are a significant source of bankruptcy or potential bankruptcy for cities and states.

I find it ironic that there is concern about the possiblitly of the legislature having to fund the URS in the furture, when more than once in the past, they have taken money out of the URS to fund other programs.

Another indicator, among many, that Utah is far from being the best managed state.

Cut all retirement for State employees now across the board.

Utah's retirement fund is not "unfunded". It is strong and well run. Besides that, very few public employees are staying on long enough to make it to retirement these days!

"Cut all retirement for State employees now across the board."

Why, one vote? Why? I'm glad you only have one vote.

What is it with some people? They want to drag everybody else down. Most state employees are very underpaid. But here is someone that wants to take more away from them. For instance UHP troopers are very underpaid. And how many of them have been injured and killed up on the freeways, helping to keep our freeways running smooth. And here is someone, one vote, that now wants to see none of them with any retirement benifit.

And he doesn't even want to phase if out, he wants it gone, now, for everyone.

Tell you what, raise my taxes, and every other workers taxes in the state, by say fifty dollars a year. I am sure this would fund the retirement system just fine. These public employees, these men and women, have worked for us, we asked them to. It's only right that we treat them right. Lets respect them.

In fact, while we are at it let's start respecting all workers.

Expecting 7.5% growth has been a good number to bank on, since the average over the long term has been about 8%. It is the persistent poor economy we have been suffering the last 5 years, along with another recession in 2001-2003, that is dragging that growth rate down.

We should not be screaming foul in Utah, as they have planned appropriately. They are doing so now, by staying on top of changes in the economy, concerning the impact to URS.

The place we should be screaming foul is the federal government, where they continue to spend money like spending more is the cure to all ills including the debt, rather than reining in the spending to allow the economy to grow. The deficits are dragging the economy at this point. Thank goodness for sequestration. Now there is actually hope that some in Washington care to stop us from going bankrupt.

John dougall just waisted 200,000 to 500,000 dollars on an audit that basically total us that the URS is using a rate of return (RR) that is widely used across the industry as the basic rate of return for most pension funds. In fact if we take the the average of what their funds are 33% stock (RR of 12%), 33% corprate bonds (RR of 6%) and 33% government backed securitites (RR of 3%) you will find that their overall rate of return for the fund will equal over the long term about 7.5%.

THanks John for being so wasteful.

So if I promise to pay my taxes but don't save enough of my money, I can just skip?