One critique, from Forbes Magazine, was pretty predictable, more or less repeating what we knew: The city’s pension systems generally have only a quarter or less of the assets on hand to pay promised pensions. But his main target is poor return on investment, with the pension funds earning an average of 7.2% between 2016 and 2022, compared with 12.8% for the S&P 500 stock index. For starters, they say Levenson himself (and Daley) created this problem by sticking with an outdated formula that grossly underfunded pensions for decades. The drop Levenson referenced occurred mostly in the period in which the new, higher spending was still being phased in. That said, the idea that we the taxpayers have sunk billions into pension funds that by some measures are worse off than they were is beyond galling.

Source: Forbes August 04, 2023 14:48 UTC