A few days ago, I wrote about the coming crisis of retirement that could last for decades. Here’s another example:

And even as its pension fund faces this giant bulge in payouts, G.M. is not putting any new money in — the company is not required to make any contributions to the fund until 2013.

The longer this goes on, the weaker the fund will be and the more uncertain its long-term viability.

For now, the pension payments to its younger “retirees,” part of a deal G.M. negotiated with the United Automobile Workers union in 2007, allow the company to drastically shrink its work force without having to come up with the cash to pay severance. The payments also relieve some of the burden on social service programs in the countless factory towns and counties around the country with large numbers of G.M.’s newly jobless.

   And…

In the short term, G.M.’s newly minted retirees, those in their 40s and 50s, have the most to lose if the plan is rapidly depleted and fails. But over time, the risk will shift to the government and the dwindling number of active U.A.W. workers still building cars at G.M. For those workers, a secure pension is already becoming an increasingly distant dream.

“They could find that they don’t get their full pensions when they retire, because the plan has had to be terminated because of the payments to current retirees,” Mr. Elliott said. “There are definitely these intergenerational transfer issues with underfunded pensions.”

   And, this article does dispell the notion that UAW retirees are living it up in retirement:

The total dollar amounts are not eye-popping. Unlike many pension plans in the public sector, G.M.’s U.A.W. plan cannot be “spiked” by working insane amounts of overtime just before retirement. Nor is it indexed for inflation.

“What we’re getting isn’t enough to live on,” said Dwayne Humphries, a 54-year-old G.M. retiree in Arlington, Tex., who completed his 30 years last year, retired, and is now getting the standard $3,150 a month, or $37,500 a year. Roughly half of the total, $19,000 a year, is the basic benefit. The rest duplicates Social Security.

“It’s tight,” said Mr. Humphries, who was earning $50,000 to $60,000 a year before his retirement. “It takes a different way of living than what you were used to.”

To make ends meet, he helps out with his son’s small business, cleaning swimming pools.

When a G.M. retiree turns 62, he joins Social Security, and the pension fund stops paying him the supplement. So eight years from now, Mr. Humphries will still be getting $37,500 a year, but only about $19,000 will come from the G.M. pension fund. The rest will come from Social Security.

   There is a lot to say here. Let me just reiterate the point I’ve made before: had we had a single-payer health care system in this country, General Motors would have been unburdened from tens of billions of dollars in health care costs, which it could have used for either investment and wages and–and it wouldn’t have had to push thousand of people into retirement and off the payroll just to stay in business, the very process that is now depleting the pension funds at a more rapid rate.