"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote:

Where does this "certain amount of money" to be set aside every year
come from if note from current tax revenues?

That comes out of tax revenues. When the employee is working. Retirement pay does
not come out of current tax revenues in the education systems with which I am
familiar.

Not necessarily. Just look at all of the corporations that are now
having to pour hundreds of millions into their pension funds to keep
them solvent.

We were discussing education system pensions. The corporate solvency issue is
primarily caused by the fact that the Federal government changed the requirements
to increase the amount of money that must be retained for each employee in a
standard retirement package plan. Some companies simply reacted by abandoning
these plans for new employees and providing strong incentives (as in "change or
get fired") to current employees to transfer over to what is called a "cash
balance payout" plan. The increased limit requirements were instituted in
reaction to the Enron scam.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."