Your comment excludes a large group of pensioners: those that retired from state-funded employment, such as teachers or other public service personnel. Their co

Your comment excludes a large group of pensioners: those that retired from state-funded employment, such as teachers or other public service personnel. Their contract stipulates an ongoing obligation that the state has to them once they retire, and many states (all?) don't have the legal right (or the realistic ability) to discharge their debt to their pensioners in bankruptcy. No potential employee would consider their future pension a discharge-able debt, and thus, they would not realistically consider the loss of their pension to be a risk to be accepted. In other words, their in-kind exchange is: they work as instructed in return for immediate pay and a future obligation based on the time they worked. Disclosure: from Illinois, where many public service employees are getting the shaft. EDIT: additionally, teachers in Illinois expect to receive a benefit from the Teacher's Retirement System, and as such, they weren't contributing to federal social security programs. There has been an ongoing concern that the TRS funds will vanish and all those teachers would be without the usual post-retirement income that this country's social and taxation policies have all but guaranteed. Yeah, they are basically made to forego debt owed to them by the federal government in return for debt owed to them by a state government. The same state that brought you Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan and Dan Walker, prompting at least one person to suggest that they need to build a governor's wing at the prison.