I want to be able to live in the 1960s standard of living.
... says charby on the internet.
I'm pretty sure you don't, actually.
Corporate pensions went away because they became victim of hostile takeovers, investment groups looks at companies with a large pension account as a place to get free money for more investment.
That's not quite the whole story. Sure, that sort of thing happened, but even well run pension plans suffered from increased recipient lifespans and dealing with distributions during rocky financial periods. Plus, increasingly mobile workers received less value from a pension plan.
Now, if you want to talk about greedy pension theft, governments have done more than corporations ever have. The difference is governments can just stick it to the taxpayer.
Also what freaking state does what you mentioned above? I want to go work there.
New York was what I had in mind.
I work for the State of Iowa and we don't even come close to that. Our pension plan is you pay 6.5% in, state pays 6.5%, takes 7 years to be vested and it's not portable. You can't draw from it unless your years of service and age match 88, 20 years and 60 years of age or legal retirement age. Each year in it is 2% of your best five year salary average up to 60% (30 years of service). We don't get free health insurance when you retire or become disabled. Vacation accrues by years of service 1-5 years (2 weeks) 5-12 years (3 weeks) 12-19 years (4 weeks) 19-25 years (4.5 weeks) 25 years (5 weeks). We have insurance, but the cheapest is an HMO and you have to play by the HMO rules, I have that one because I figured it out 14 years ago.
Making some quick assumptions of a 30 year career with an average of $50,000 per year and a highest 5 year salary of $70,000 would result in a retirement benefit of $42,000 a year for a total investment of about $100,000 on your part. If the pension fund is actually collecting the money and investing it, and the stock market is doing well that's likely a pretty healthy pension.
If you live to be 85 then over 25 years you'd draw $1,050,000. If the funds aren't invested, then the taxpayer is funding an extra $35,000 per year or so.