"Companies running a pension deficit should have payout caps on pensions to protect those on the lower levels while the higher levels feel the impact of decisions they probably took part in. Also have a requirement that a percentage of pre-tax profit must be used to reduce the deficit."
The deficit is probably inherited - a civil service pension scheme set up to guarantee income to pensioners who were expected to live a handful of years after retirement who might now well manage 25. The demand on the scheme would be four or five times what it was set up to fund.
If you introduce your profit rule companies will just reduce their profits by re-timing capital investments. Deficits have to be made up over a long time in a careful and planned way, because a sure way of really messing up a pension fund is to have the company financing it go bust.
I doubt the scheme in deficit is open to new entrants so it's unlikely that any current executives would feel the impact of any cap - it would be existing pensioners and people yet to retire.
There's a reason problems like this are considered and managed by experts in the field rather than by taking the first few below the line comments on an Internet forum and adopting them as policy. If a complex problem seems to be easy to solve, you've probably not understood it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
