It measures the time until pension disasters two ways. On a termination basis, future money paid in by taxpayers and public employees is used to pay for the pension benefits that are being earned today, to ensure the non-retired will also get a pension. On an ongoing pensions, all the money paid now goes to the retired, including the money paid by current employees, leaving no money for their own pensions. So what happens to the NYC teacher pensions under that scenario?
"Under either the termination approach or the ongoing approach, the exhaustion dates for individual plans are widely distributed around the aggregate exhaustion dates…As expected, the ongoing scenario shows far fewer plans exhausting their assets in the next 15 years, suggesting that plans have more breathing room than the termination approach suggests."
That is, costs can be shifted to future taxpayers, postponing the collapse of public services and benefits until Generation Greed is no longer around or no longer needs them.
"Even in the ongoing framework, however, several large plans run out of assets in the next 15 years. These plans include Connecticut SERS, Illinois SERS, Illinois Universities, Kentucky ERS, Louisiana Teachers, New York City Teachers, and Rhode Island ERS."
"Benefits will be paid because they are contractual obligations of the employer, but the money will have to come from general revenues rather than the pension fund."
No problem. If we keep NYC taxes as a high level, lay off all the young teachers, keep their own pension contributions, and shut down the public schools, Randi Weingarten's generation still gets more than one year in retirement for each year worked. Game over.