&gt;The US treasury can&#x27;t and won&#x27;t ever run out of dollars.<p>Again, the point is that dynamic is unrelated to the <i>definition</i> of the public sector.  I understand the on-the-ground reality; I was objecting to your characterizing of it as &quot;by definition&quot;.<p>&gt;There has to be wiggle room somewhere if it&#x27;s a private sector obligation. Pension are invested and future payouts are based upon certain assumptions about those investments holding. A lot of perfectly reasonable assumptions pre-2008 suddenly went out of the window afterwards.<p>Right, but there&#x27;s a big difference between &quot;our reasonable RoR estimates were a little off and we unexpectedly needed to add a little more this year&quot; vs &quot;we never funded it to begin with and expected to earn the income to fund this later&quot;.<p>Funding it <i>now</i> makes the promise honest; &quot;we&#x27;ll find the money later&quot; isn&#x27;t, and it&#x27;s wrong for GM or the USPS to do this.  For the US government, the promises need to go right into the federal debt, which the 75-year prefund obligation would accomplish.<p>&gt;I&#x27;ve never heard any ostensibly pro worker advocate say this.<p>You did, when you advocated the USPS handle its pensions that way, not having to prefund them (modulo time&#x2F;RoR discount).