[M2inOR]

Here's the Oregon story about their PERS Public Employee Retirement System. There are several tiers.

With the original Tier 1, there was a guaranteed rate of return of approximately 7% per year, and a very short period of time to get vested. Worse, the pension benefit was determined not by total contributions, but rather by the average pay of the last 3 years before retirement.

Even more worse, if market returns were more than 7%, then all that money was credited to the employees retirement account. If market performance was less than 7%, then taxpayers made up the difference to credit the pension acct.

So...a person could be in a low paying job for most of those early years, with smaller contributions, but only the average pay of those last e years would determine benefit, not their actual contributions over their employment.

Another "benefit" was that there was an uplift in pension benefits if one remained in Oregon after retiring, to help pay Oregon's high state income taxes.

There are now several tiers to help Oregon reduce its liability, but bottom line is that the PERS system is extremely underfunded, and it's beneficiaries receive a benefit far higher than employment contributions have funded.

So glad to no longer be paying taxes to Oregon.