This is in response to Donald LaBranche’s letter, July 22, in which he feels sad for the private-sector retirees. Public-sector retirees have it much better than private.

What many state retirees do not understand is that their retirement system is impossible to sustain and should never have been promised in the first place. Just the fact that their pension fund is seriously underfunded should be an indication that the state’s lawmakers were giving away the farm.

Common sense should tell people that to receive retirement benefits that they did not pay for is financially unsustainable. Why people look to government as a vast money pit is foolish. It is all our money and it is not free. That money comes from all of us in increased taxes and fees.

Most public-sector retirement funding is a Ponzi scheme. Money is finite and just because government prints more does not make it free.

So, too, is the pipe dream that unions created the great retirement system. Unions are to blame for pressuring legislators to create what they cannot pay for. It is just more of the get-mine thinking that is bankrupting all of the states and the nation. You cannot pay into a system for 20 to 30 years and then take out of it for a similar period at 50 to 75 percent of what you previously earned.

We are now going to see the result, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

George A. Fogg, North Yarmouth