There is a drip, drip of stories and evidence that shows how the entire traditional pension system is close to collapse. Back in August, I wrote about Retirement in Peril as evidenced by the struggle facing workers at United Airlines and the deep shit that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is in.

Now, comes a story from the New York Times’ Mary Williams Walsh on the PBGC’s even deeper problems. Walsh, who has been doing the best job in the media on pension issues, writes that, “the federal agency that insures pension plans said yesterday that its deficit, already at the highest in its history, had doubled in its last fiscal year, to $23.3 billion.

Over a 12-month period, the agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, incurred losses of $12.1 billion, according to the agency’s audited annual report for fiscal 2004.

“Much of the loss was a result of pension fund failures in the airline industry.

The agency, created in 1974 to be the federal safety net when pensions fail, has now lost an average of $10 billion a year for the last three years, according to one estimate. The mounting losses come at a time when the agency is responsible for paying the pensions for more than one million people covered by pension plans that failed,” writes Walsh.

Then, today, comes word that flight attendants are threatening to strike United and Us Airways if the airlines insist on gutting labor contracts, with the help of the courts. The airlines are “planning to jettison their defined-benefit pension plans covering thousands of workers,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

This stinks. And what an issue for the Democrats to ride: this is the real “death tax” or at the very least a “seniors’ tax” because the law is letting corporations steal from people who were promised pensions and whose pensions are essentially deferred wages–money that people agreed not to pocket in return for a promise that it would be there when they retired.