June 29, 2011
Just asking, and asking why no one in the media is asking. The Washington Post, NYT and other major news outlets have been running wild yelling about excessive public sector pensions. The median pension for a public sector worker is a bit over $20,000. In many cases this is their sole retirement income, since they are not covered by Social Security. The pensions of public sector employees has been the topic of numerous front page stories in major newspapers.
This is why it is striking that no one raised this question with the announcement that Christine Lagarde had been selected as the new director of the IMF. IMF economists are often able to retire with 6-figure salaries in their early 50s. This is likely to strike many people as unfair by itself, however it would seem especially inappropriate in an institution that has explicitly called for governments to raise the age of eligibility for much smaller pensions to 65 or even 67.
And the strangest part of it all is that no one in media is even talking about it.
Comments