Can I prove what?

Meanwhile... yes.  Companies that do offer pension plans totally are fucking over their pensioners.

When an employee retires his retirement plan should be prefunded and set in stone.  If the company goes belly up tommorrow you should get your full benefits.  You are retired, you fufilled your end of the bargin.

Either way, this more or less explains the problem at the moment with the post office.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/understanding-the-post-office-s-benefits-mess.html

They haven't even fully funded retirement benefits or CURRENT retirees.  The law was changed so the post office would be forced to make up what it owed.  The problem isn't the post office runs like this.  It's that the government, and companies that have pensions DON'T run like this.

Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but I'm not used to that kind of terminology.

How does a city become "bankrupt" and what happens next?

They have run out of money to pay their bills (employees, city programs, pensions, etc) so it should go to a court who will split up wwhat they have and divide it between who they owe. Usually means you wont get back all you put in, so people with pensions through the city may loose some of their funding. This is a slightly different case i think since the state court has ruled they cant go through bankruptcy so i am not sure how it will affect them

This is true, but I don't think there's a country out there with the amount of debt that the U.S. is currently sitting on (11 Trillion and rising?).  I honestly don't see an explanation as to why prices of goods and services hasn't skyrocketed in relation with their money printing.

I could be wrong, but I believe Japan, and some European countries hold a higher debt to gdp ratio. not sure though

Yeah, but it's fully funded for a ridiculous length of time based on employees who may not ever retire or reach pension. It's not even based on how many workers they have...it's just a flat 5.5B every year for 75 years. It's outrageous. And even then, you have to factor in inflation, so the money you prepay today is worth vastly more than the same amount 40 years down the line....even MA-rep R Scott Brown calls it unfair and irresponsible to have them paying this much.

Or am I misinformed about this? Your link seems to suggest that "Going forward, the Postal Service should be expected to cover the normal cost of retiree health care, paying a little bit more than it is right now, but far less than what Congress has obligated it to pay"

I'm just basing my judgement based on the Canadian debt.  We're sitting on 500 billion dollars of debt.  Used to be 400 and decreasing before our current Prime Minster came into power.

Greece, Portugal and Ireland have all required bailouts from the EU to stop them going bankrupt. Spain and Italy are also currently struggling quite badly with financial problems. They are all suffering from very high unemployment and ongoing recessions.

France are in a much better position, but there are concerns for them too. The UK was a big worry, but at the moment recent data has been relatively positive. Though it has turned out our recession in 2008 was far bigger and deeper than anybody had previously thought. Germany have weathered it fairly well throughout, but their population are getting a bit fed up of the "Bailouts" and feeling like they are bank rolling other countries' irresponsibility.

Thats my little snapshot of Europe anyway.

As for Japan, their economy has been stagnant for a good decade. Their current government are now printing loads of Yen to try and bump start their economy. They've not had any real growth in a long time now and are very indebted.

I just went to go look at Greece's debt, they're sitting at 500 billion.  I gotta ask, cause I'm missing a huge peice of the puzzle, but why is the U.S. allowed to sit at 11 trillion dollars of debt but Greece is at bankruptcy and needs a bailout?  Or even here in Canada, we've accumulated that much debt, but we don't need a bailout.  I'm honestly asking this cause these numbers don't make sense to me, is there some magic accounting magic at work here?

Somewhat misinformed yes.   What the article was trying to get across is basically everyone who had retired up until 2006 had NOTHING in their retirement funds.

It's a flat 5.5B every year for 10 years because that's how much it's projected is needed to cover those people who have already retired as well as those likely to.  

If instead of it being a general "Retirement fund" that prefunds everyone an equal amount like a pool of water.   It prefunded in order of seniority like a number of lined up glasses, the amount of money poured wouldn't yet fill the glasses of everyone who is retired, let alone everyone who will at some point retire.

It still doesn't even cover what they owe the current retirees in earned benefits. 

As for Scott Brown.  It doesn't surprise me he would say that.  He seems pretty on the level about what he believes in... and this is a clear "reversed issue for poltiical gain" moment.

When the Bill passed in the house it was a bi-partisan vote that didn't require a roll call but it had around 104  Democratic Co-Sponsers to 58 Republican ones.  One Republican wanted a roll call, presumibly because he was against the bill... but he was denied.

It passed unanimously in the senate.   (That is, nobody that was their, including Harry Reid had any objection to it's passing."

If you pay attention to what the post office wants, part of it is legally forced aribitration to more or less bust the Post Office Unions.

Outside a few conservatives in the house this was pretty much a shoe in.