The market's dramatic decline adds to our other financial problems -- the mortgage tomfoolery, high energy prices, failing businesses, soaring unemployment, record foreclosures and massive bailouts. It's unnerving, if not frightening.

But it's no big deal for one large segment of Americans -- government employees.

Most governments are still hiring, not firing. Salaries are increasing, not decreasing. Taxes and government debt are going up, not down.

Most government workers still retire many years before private sector employees. Their opulent pension benefits are fully guaranteed, regardless of their pension fund's performance.

Surprisingly, some government employees whine about how tough things are for them. Incredibly, they demand that we pay ever-higher taxes.

If your pension is a 401(k) plan and/or an IRA, you've seen the plunging value of your retirement. Almost all private sector pensions are variations of these "defined contribution" plans: You, and hopefully, your employer, put money aside in your earmarked account, but what you get is strictly dependent on how well the investment funds perform. No guarantees.

However, government employees have a "defined benefit" plan: Under a generous formula, that pension is defined as some percent of your highest salary times the number of years worked. Regardless of how well the pension fund does, or how little money is put into the fund, these benefits are guaranteed by taxpayers.

So as it turns out, taxpayers have two different pension plans to worry about -- your own, and "your" government employees. If there is any shortfall in the funding or performance of government pensions, it must be made up 100 percent by the taxpayers.

One thing's for certain -- if you live in a Southern California city, your city workers' pensions are seriously underfunded. All our cities are in that position. In addition, your county workers' pensions are underfunded. Plus your state workers' pensions. And that systematic underfunding was true before the market meltdown.

How did this happen? From a politician's standpoint, it's the perfect labor union concession -- instant, retroactive, underfunded defined benefit plan increases, where the true cost doesn't become apparent until years later (usually after the guilty politicians have retired).

Moreover, the politicians, city managers --- everyone in the government -- benefits from these luxurious pensions. There's no taxpayer voice in the process.

Compliant actuaries use outdated mortality tables that underestimate lifespans by five or more years. Unrealistic annual earnings rates are assumed, with disastrous consequences when earnings fall short, let alone turn negative. Defined benefit plans all fail to perform as promised, with taxpayers getting the bill for the shortfall.

We must end defined benefit for new government hires. But the damage has already been done.

Therefore, we need to contract out every possible government function to the private sector, getting politicians out of the pension-giveaway business. That, plus the threat of formal bankruptcy, are all we taxpayers have left as weapons.

Richard Rider is chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters.