The unions lied. Your children's financial future died.-------A growing crisis: Public pension funds running out of money

A growing crisis: Public pension funds running out of money | Communities Digital News:
".....Roger Lowenstein, an outside director of the Sequoia Fund and author of “While America Aged,” points out that, “For years, localities and states have been skimping on what they owe.
Public pension funds are now so massively short of money to pay future claims, depending on how their liabilities are valued, the deficit ranges from $1 trillion to $3 trillion. 
Pension funds subsist on three revenue streams: contributions from the employer; contributions from the employees; and investment earnings.
But public employees have often contributed less than the actuarially determined share, in effect borrowing against retirement plans to avoid having to cut budgets or raise taxes.”
Pension funds, Lowenstein notes, also assumed that they could count on high annual returns, typically 8 per cent, on their investments: 
“In the past, many funds did earn that much, but not lately.
Thanks to high assumed returns, governments projected that they could afford to both ratchet up benefits and minimize contributions.
Except, of course, returns were not guaranteed.
Optimistic benchmarks actually heightened the risk because they forced fund managers to over-reach.”