My observations indicate that these type of super great public pensions are ususally reserved for police officers, firemen, and other public safety personnel. Connie Office Clerk, Amy Accountant, and Edward Engineer rarely get such deals.
The University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP) is one of the largest retirement plans in the country. It has employees in essentially all occupations.
UC employees retiring at age 60 receives 2.5% of salary times years of service (salary is typically the average of the last 3 years of employment). So a person who begins employment at age 30 and works for 30 years until age 60 receives 75% of their salary. A person with 40 years of service receives 100% of their salary (the maximum).
UC employees can retire early beginning at age 50. At age 50, they receive 1.1% of salary times years of service.
Unused sick leave adds to service credit. This is roughly one additional year for every 20 years of employment for people who are never sick, such as myself.
The UC pension has a COLA, although not a full COLA. Historically, the pension loses an average of about 1.25% to inflation every year, or about 1/2 of it's real value over 50 years.
In addition, UC offers a 403b and 457, although there is no employer match. Still, age 50+ employees can contribute $46K/yr tax free to these accounts. In addition, they can make $33.5K in after tax contributions and immediately roll these funds over to a Roth using the backdoor approach.
Retirees receive medical/dental benefits (e.g., retirees with 20 or more years of service pay 20% of health insurance premiums, and nothing for dental coverage). However, these benefits are not part of the vested pension and are not guaranteed.
From about 1990 until a few years ago, the UC pension plan was so well funded (certainly not a ponzi scheme) that there were no employer or employee contributions. However, such contributions resumed a few years ago.
UC is in the process of making some changes to its defined benefit pension plan (e.g., full retirement at age 65 instead of 60).
My defined benefit pension, which is now private, is loosely tied to the UC retirement system (e.g., same age factors and payout formulas). My pension plan on a whole is about 150% funded. In fact, until last year, I never made any employee contribution in 22 years of employment. I now contribute 7% to the defined benefit plan. I have very little concern about the plan going bankrupt, although PBGC would step in if it did.
My only significant concern deals with very high inflation. While my plan has a COLA, like UC, it is only a partial COLA. I will be fine if inflation is similar to historical results (including bouts of 1970's high inflation). However, my pension could be devastated by long periods of very high inflation (e.g., 10 years of > 20% inflation). I am considering adjusting my regular investment portfolio to act as a hedge against this possibility.