I cannot get to the entire article (paywalled) -- but I will point out an issue I know is plaguing US municipal and state pensions. Aside from the permanent ad

I cannot get to the entire article (paywalled) -- but I will point out an issue I know is plaguing US municipal and state pensions. Aside from the permanent administrative staff, many funds are in the hands and political control of people generally wholly unqualified to understand and manage them, and who have at most their elected positions on the line if it goes badly. It's not their money, so what does it matter if they just apply expertise to the fund's management with all the part-time attention of a high schooler? The amount of rank amateurism in deciding the fate of many, many billions of dollars is incredible. Like less-than-Excel spreadsheet sophistication. Take a couple of general examples: -- Many state/local funds estimate or forecast some optimistic annual return % when they set the benefits level. Then they never revisit or adjust contributions to account for when the market returns fall. Or they do absolutely stupid things like increase benefits when a certain year looks better than average ("our hard working state employees deserve to participate in gains in the market, blah blah blah") -- They'll set labor contracts with no eye towards what the promised benefits will cost 25 years from now. Who cares? The elected officials now won't be around when the bill comes due, and the incentives to not get tossed out of office for being responsible and clamping down on the expensive party are much more real than paying a few dollars more decades from now. -- My favorite example: under years of mismanagement of rank amateurs (as I named above), Detroit discovered that its pension fund had been habitually paying out "13th paychecks" each year -- an extra check in December above what was planned, as a xmas gift to employees/retirees, because "it looked like our fund was doing well, and these people need that money to make ends meet". You may be surprised at how bad the situation is in every state and city (with few exceptions) thanks to the bad incentives that these systems create. And few rewards for people who are responsible enough to try to fix it before it becomes critical. People have been pointing to waves of bankruptcy and spiraling costs in the near future, for years now. And you wonder why we can't fund infrastructure and other nice things.