More Pension Underfunding: The Wrong Message?

Here's yet one more study on pension underfunding, this one from The Manhattan Institute, no friend of public pensions anywhere. The subject for the moment is pensions public education but the data is remarkably similar to the AEI study that I linked the other day on public employees in general (and also to the Stanford study, discussed in the same link).

I don't doubt the general drift of the data, and do I detect a note of exultant schadenfreude here? Pensions so small we can drown them in a bathtub! Oooh, look at those rapacious schoolteachers squirm! Well enough, but I wonder if outfits like Manhattan have thought through their strategy. Seems to me that sooner or later the victims recipients of all these absurdly fanciful pension "commitments" might finally get off their collective backsides and start some pushback, start demanding a bit of substance with all the hot air.

Meantime, it seems to me that data like this goes a long way to discredit the general proposition that public employees are overpaid. They are often paid well, but if they are being paid in empty promises, then maybe it is time to face reality and mark to market.