SOME THOUGHTS ON WHAT TO DO about those overgenerous / underfunded public pensions: “Why Isn’t Anyone Talking Later Retirement for Government Workers? . . . The irony is that much of the news around GM, Ford and Chrysler involves their huge defined benefit obligations. Much of the debate around whether to put more government money into these companies tends to come back to the issue of pension and health care payments to those companies millions of retirees. Private workers may end up working longer to balance out the good news that they are living longer. Yet there is virtually no discussion of this with regard to government and public sector workers. I imagine that is because government workers tend to be the ones who vote on their own retirement ages.”