One of the least edifying aspects of the febrile debate on public sector pensions is the charge being made, often by people who should know better, that current public sector pensions are in some way “Gold-plated”. It is certainly true that the retirement prospects of employees in the private sector have been dealt a series of blows over the past decade – blows from which employees in the public sector have hitherto been immune. But it is facile and wrong to say that the problem is one of equity and that public sector pensioners should “suffer” in the same way that those in the private sector will.
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