By anyone's measure, $561,286 is a lot of cash. Especially when it's the annual retirement payout for a retired professor at one of New York's public universities.
The man's name is Edgar McManus, and he made headlines in The Post after an Empire Center for Public Policy report noted his pension is the highest payout for anyone in either the city or state teachers retirement systems.
Now, let's stipulate up front we recognize that Prof. McManus is an unusual case.
He's 90 years old, and he didn't retire until he was 88. So the argument can be made that, given the normal rules of life expectancy, the former CUNY teacher will ultimately be costing taxpayers much less than if he had retired when he was first eligible.
Moreover, the rules that allowed the Queens College history professor to amass such a large amount have changed.
Still, his case highlights two key facts that help explain why public pensions have become such a burden to taxpayers.
Fact one is defined benefits. Traditionally, most public-pension plans are still based on defined benefits — in other words, a no-risk guarantee to employees of a certain payout upon retirement.
Here in New York, professors at public universities have an option to enroll in a defined-contribution plan, but these represent a small piece of public-sector pensions in the state.
What makes this a problem is that, just like Prof. McManus, we are all living longer these days. In some cases, that means our retirement years can be as long as or even longer than our working years.
Without much greater contributions from workers, the longer retirement period these days means the math of the old system no longer adds up.
This is why most of the private sector has moved away from defined-benefit plans and toward defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s.
In sharp contrast, New York's public-pension systems remain mired in the past, where a person can retire with a guaranteed pension close to his or her full final salary at age 63 — and can even collect a reduced pension at age 55. And if teachers didn't retire until they were 88, we might be able to afford the current system.
Only in a system like ours, where retirement rules for government employees are so out of whack with the laws of finance and the realities of life-expectancy, could a $561,286 pension for a history prof look like a bargain.
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