During the Great Recession when I was watching my 401K vaporize I envied 2 people. The first was a colleague who in late 2007 moved his entire 401K into cash because he was afraid of terrorism. Well, there was no terrorist attack but his well-timed move got him through 2008 without a scratch. The other guy I envied was my neighbor, a cop, because he was covered by a public pension. After 20 years on the force he was going to retire with 80% of his salary whether there was a market crash or not. He was safe and I wasn't and I hated it, and I'm not the only one. Retirement experts call this phenomenon pension envy. The symptoms of pension envy are well known. One is strong feelings of regret that you didn't become a teacher or judge or dog catcher. The other is anger over the rising taxes you pay to support government pensions. There is no known cure for pension envy except, perhaps, this one. Arithmetic, last month the Pew assumed spelling Center on the States released a study of state pension plans that found a trillion dollar gap between the retirement benefits states had promised employees and what they had set aside to pay them. Politicians can close the gap by raising taxes but pension envy makes that a sure-fire vote loser. So my prediction, pretty soon government workers will go through their own version of the cold reality bath we 401K jockeys went through. We learned that 401K's don't go up forever. Government workers will learn that they can't count on pension promises states can't afford to keep.