Pension haters

[2B]

I am extremely thankful that I will have one (pension) after 37 years at the same place. Some sacrifices perhaps, due to lower public service pay.

The less pay for public employees seem to be a "given" for public sector workers. It may have been true in the past and it may be true for your specific position. I will say that in the O&G business the technically competent public sector employees are very underpaid but have a much more stable employment environment. Unfortunately, I've repeatedly had to deal with [-]idiots[/-] technically challenged public sector employees.

Here's a semi-recent study. Like all such articles there are lots of questions on methods and apples to apples issues. I wonder if there is any relationship to public vs private employment with the richest counties in the country surround Washington DC.

Public sector workers make more in salary and benefits than those in private sector, Labor Department says | cleveland.com

I'm not trying to start a fight or be labeled a "hater." I just wish to not accept the presumption that "I'm in the public sector so I make/made less than if I was in the public sector." If it was true, why are people lining up for public sector openings?

 

[steelyman]

Goodness. I would never have guessed you were anything but a native English speaker and writer, and a very fluent one at that (not all native english speakers are fluent in their own tongue!) Those commenters must [-]have a screw loose [/-]be far more discriminating about English than is common.

Amethyst

I've never been accused of being an English speaker around here (nor has anyone been rude). I have, though, been accused of being a rapper!

 

[seraphim]

Merely repeating what others have said:

Have a pension, only observed one case of semi-hostile pension envy, and my pension allows me a more aggressive AA, not a more conservative one ( as someone mentioned early on).

Thing is, most people DO have a pension, and a defined benefit pension at that. It's called Social Security. My pension is similar, except I paid a higher percentage than SS recipients do, and - as a result - get a higher percentage of my previous income. I don't qualify for SS - had I no investments, that would be all I have.

 

[2B]

+1

FWIW, a friend of mine worked all her life for the state of CA and retired recently. She mentioned that calPERS pensioners like herself get some guff from various sources, but she didn't elaborate and I never gave it much thought.

My SIL will start a CALPERS pension soon. She expects that there will be some issues with the promised amount being continued indefinitely. I don't give her any guff about the pension. SIL and BIL are in the process of moving out of CA so they don't have to pay CA income taxes on the pension and their other income.

I'm all in favor of people getting whatever is legally theirs. The villains of the whole process is the politicos that failed to fund these potentially empty promises.

 

[seraphim]

"
I'm not trying to start a fight or be labeled a "hater." I just wish to not accept the presumption that "I'm in the public sector so I make/made less than if I was in the public sector." If it was true, why are people lining up for public sector openings?"

I took mine because of perceived job security. Took a pay cut to do so. I could have made more in the private sector, or could have lost a job been stuck in unemployment. With a family, I placed the security of having a job over the possibility of making more money.

 

[foxfirev5]

I have found this forum to have quite a cross section of society. This makes for interesting and sometimes lively discussion. I really don't recall a bias against pensions. Pensions are simply another retirement vehicle. However I do beleive when people here are giving advice, say my AA is 90-100 equities, they should also disclose that they have a pension for their living expenses.
From a legacy standpoint I would much rather have a large IRA than a pension that goes away upon my demise. Others plan to leave nothing and can purchase an annuity if desired. To each his own.
Some of us have also worked for a number years at a company only to have the pension frozen or eliminated. I got hit with this after 14 years, but have had another 20 to recover. To compensate for the loss the company contributes a fixed 5% of income each year. After 20 years it helped.
You play the hand your dealt.

 

[robnplunder]

I am a bit puzzled why the OP's post is not removed as soon as it was posted. It had no basis, and seemed to be a post designed to goad others into arguments. I've seen no pension haters in this forum to justify the OP's post, not any more or worse than other "haters" (the OP's terminology, not mine). We all have our likes and dislikes but keep things civil.

 

[aja8888]

I have a pension. It's called Social Security. I paid into it for 50 years. It's COLA'd. Right now I receive about 20% of my last few years' average salary. Uncle Sam can mess with it as he makes the rules. I'll bet there are people in this country getting SS pension's and never paid into the system.

I probably should have taken a different route to where I am now, but that's life.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Quote:
Originally Posted by soupcxan
I

don't have a problem with public pensions.

I have a problem with public employees that spike their last year of service with huge amounts of overtime, vacation time, accrued sick time, and then that one year becomes the basis for a lifetime of payouts.

I believe even most "advocates" or "defenders" of DB pensions would agree this is an abuse and should be greatly curtailed, if not banned completely. It is utterly absurd that some people can bring home an annual pension that exceeds even the highest salary they ever earned in their lifetime. However, it's also the case that the outraged media types and bloggers are going to make this practice look a lot more common and egregious than it usually is in real life.

Quote:
Originally Posted by soupcxan

I have a problem with public employees who "retire" but then continue working the exact same job, now collecting a pension plus their paychecks. Double dipping.

It feels like cheating in a sense, but to the taxpayer it's really not much different than if this person didn't retire. They are no longer accruing pension benefits, and had they left, they'd be paying someone else's salary AND pension benefits. So I'm really not sure in terms of hit to the taxpayer, this is really a problem -- at least not if the actuarial payouts are sound. This leaves them, an extra worker who is not receiving pension benefits as part of their current compensation.


I'm not a hater, but someone explain to me as a taxpayer why we should tolerate this ?

In California this (spiking and double-dipping) abuse continues. The unions run the show behind the scenes and will never allow changes to what what most people would consider abuse to their system.


There are many examples where government employees retire with pensions greater than their salary because they were allowed to cash in unused "sick time' accrued over decades and work lots of overtime in the final year.

The biggest expense for many school districts is retiree pensions and health care. And the kids suffer for it.

As an aside there is a poster on this forum who retired from the State of Nevada at age 43 by buying "airtime" for next to nothing. http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f26/nearly-there-48134.html. I can understand this person's motivation, have no I'll-will towards him and wish him well, but wouldn't a reasonable (tax-paying) person think that this system is just wrong ?

 

[HFWR]

I probably should have taken a different route to where I am now, but that's life.

Yeah, in my next life I want to be a trust fund baby...

 

[Amethyst]

I live in one of those counties. Large numbers of government workers make for a stable economic and tax base, which attracts developers, business owners, doctors, lawyers and other highly compensated people. Additionally, there are probably more defense contractors in this region than anywhere in the country.

Annoyingly, pay studies that I have read seem to lump the administrative assistants and the multi-master-degreed people together.

Highly skilled Engineering and Computer Science people can't make nearly as much working for the Government as they can working for a private contractor. Neither can highly skilled managers - I'm talking about people who lead $100 Million projects with hundreds of people. Surprisingly, some of them settle for top GS salaries of $150-$160K instead of the $300K-Plus they could make in the private sector. If 2 of them get married, they can do very well.

Then again, administrative personnel who make a long-term career in Govt, often end up making way more than they would on the outside. I'm acquainted with some who can barely do more than re-type text provided to them, but have hung in there for 35 years and are making $100K-plus. Of course, that's just a few. Some are very good at their jobs, but the fact remains that they are generously paid compared to the private sector equivalent.

Amethyst

I wonder if there is any relationship to public vs private employment with the richest counties in the country surround Washington DC.

 

[Options]

...

I'm all in favor of people getting whatever is legally theirs. The villains of the whole process is the politicos that failed to fund these potentially empty promises.

+1
What you'd call expedient government leadership at its worst.

Wish I could recall name of the article I read quite recently stating people who hate pensions have it wrong. They should be targeting the disappearance of pensions in the private sector instead. I do have to agree however with all previous posts discussing outrageous pension abuse.

Like ReWahoo, I hate pensions, too. I hate the fact that I don't have one...

 

[seraphim]

"I have a pension. It's called Social Security. I paid into it for 50 years. It's COLA'd. Right now I receive about 20% of my last few years' average salary. Uncle Sam can mess with it as he makes the rules. I'll bet there are people in this country getting SS pension's and never paid into the system. "

Can't receive SS unless you've paid into it for 40 quarters. Forget what the minimum amount is.

 

[Calico]

"I have a pension. It's called Social Security. I paid into it for 50 years. It's COLA'd. Right now I receive about 20% of my last few years' average salary. Uncle Sam can mess with it as he makes the rules. I'll bet there are people in this country getting SS pension's and never paid into the system. "

Can't receive SS unless you've paid into it for 40 quarters. Forget what the minimum amount is.

My ex-stepmother was married to my father for 20 years. Because she was married to him for more than 10 years, she has been collecting social security since the age of 65, and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. I believe her benefit was increased upon his death, if I am not mistaken. She did not contribute to social security.

 

[nun]

I was a contractor with marginal benefits and was making about half of my prior job but not much different than what I'd have paid someone to do what I was doing at NASA. IMHO, most of the CS people I interacted with were glorified paper pushers that would probably not be anywhere near the pay their GS levels were paying. There were also way more of them than any private company would have had for the tasks before them. Some worked separate jobs out of the NASA office.
.

Which NASA site? I worked as a contractor at GSFC with a lot of civil servants and I know I got paid more, but my benefits were far less. I'm thinking of going back there again as a contractor and working with the same civil servants after 15 years away........

A lot of the comments about public pensions don't take into account the wide range of ways they are funded. I pay 11% of may salary into my MA state pension and the state kicks in 4.5%, not much different from a 401k plan. The issues are mostly with the multipliers for the long service folks in the defined benefit calculations. Still the average pension for an MA state employee is $26k and they get no SS so I have a problem with people saying public pensions are rich.

Also if people are going to criticize public pensions they should also be going after military benefits and pensions.

 

[Midpack]

I'm all in favor of people getting whatever is legally theirs. The villains of the whole process is the politicos that failed to fund these potentially empty promises.

+1
What you'd call expedient government leadership at its worst.

• Candidate A platform: I've studied our pension funding and we're fine (even though that's not the case at all). All obligations will be met without an increase in taxes/fees.
• Candidate B platform: I've studied our pension funding and we're seriously underfunded. We're going to have to increase taxes and/or reduce pension payouts to future, maybe even current retirees to ensure we can meet our obligations.

1. All else being equal, which candidate do you think "we" have historically elected?
2. Whose fault is that?

People have been bribed with their own money for generations, politicians can't get elected unless they tell us what we want to hear. Voters don't want the truth if it's bad news, or might require sacrifice or tough decisions, but they're more than willing to criticize after the fact. We expect politicians to tell us one thing and then do another?

 

[samclem]

I don't have a problem with public pensions.

I have a problem with public employees that spike their last year of service with huge amounts of overtime, vacation time, accrued sick time, and then that one year becomes the basis for a lifetime of payouts.

I have a problem with public employees who "retire" but then continue working the exact same job, now collecting a pension plus their paychecks.
http://www.governing.com/columns/public-money/Looking-Twice-at-Pension.html

If we have an objection to those practices, why not object to the rules that allow them, to the system? Isn't that that the real problem, rather than people who fully comply with the rules to their benefit?

 

[2B]

"I have a pension. It's called Social Security. I paid into it for 50 years. It's COLA'd. Right now I receive about 20% of my last few years' average salary. Uncle Sam can mess with it as he makes the rules. I'll bet there are people in this country getting SS pension's and never paid into the system. "

Can't receive SS unless you've paid into it for 40 quarters. Forget what the minimum amount is.

My wife barely qualified. The minimum for 4 quarters in a year is to earn $4000 and you can get all four quarters of credit in one quarter -- at least my wife did. She'll get pennies on her own SS but did qualify in her own right for medicare. She'll get 50% of my SS.

 

[clifp]

OP - I suspect you are over sensitive on the topic. I have a Federal pension and have posted in numerous threads on pensions. I have not sensed significant hostility to pensioners. The main differences focus on appropriate steps to resolve underfunding of public pensions. From a public pensioner's perspective some of those posts seem insensitive to the financial sacrifices we made based on the promise of future rewards. On the other hand, many of us pensioners at times seem insensitive to the implicit promises of financial responsibility made to the taxpayers who we expect to pay for our pensions. I am more comfortable discussing pension issues here than I would be at most online forums.

I think you nailed Don. I don't begrudge anyone their pension (although I am slightly jealous, just as I am sure there folks who are jealous of my Intel stock options.). I actually find the Federal employee retirement system to be a model, that I wish state,local, and corporations adopted. The FERS system includes a traditional pension which with SS provides an adequate retirement. However, if you want to retire early you have to save on your own.

However, many many pensions are underfunded and changes have to made or they will simply run out of money. Examples include Detroit, or Cedars Fall RI, and many other examples both public and private.

The question is who is going to pay for the shortfall. I feel strongly that it shouldn't just be the taxpayers, or the taxpayer+future government employees. But rather it should be shared sacrifice that includes, taxpayers, new employees, existing employees, and some case existing retirees.

Among existing retirees, many have the attitude "hell no I worked hard for pension no way I am going to give up part of my future COLA adjustment".
So yes I'll be negative to retirees who feel that way.

 

[ziggy29]

I actually find the Federal employee retirement system to be a model, that I wish state,local, and corporations adopted. The FERS system includes a traditional pension which with SS provides an adequate retirement. However, if you want to retire early you have to save on your own.

+1

You can follow all these so-called "pension envy" threads going back to the darkest days in 2008-09, and even then I was advocating for the FERS model of retirement planning, one that has a truly three-legged stool. Perhaps the feds' early adoption of this model, some 30 years ago, is part of the reason why federal pension liabilities aren't as onerous as state and local liabilities, and why CSRS isn't bankrupting Uncle Sam like legacy state and local plans that often are still open to new hires. If the last 30 years of Federal hires were on CSRS, it might be a much uglier budget picture for the US Treasury.

 

[ripper1]

I don't have a problem with public pensions.

I have a problem with public employees that spike their last year of service with huge amounts of overtime, vacation time, accrued sick time, and then that one year becomes the basis for a lifetime of payouts.

I have a problem with public employees who "retire" but then continue working the exact same job, now collecting a pension plus their paychecks. Double dipping.

Spiking | Calpensions

Looking Twice at Pension Double-Dipping

What percentage of public employees get to do this. I would say 1% or less.

 

[Texas Proud]

I am surprised that porky has not yet come....

To the original claim.... There have been many posts that talk about what people do not like... and pensions are not 'it'.... IOW, it is not common practice to hate pensions...


There is a group of people who push back when someone has a pension and say 'you cannot change my pension'... most will say 'you have earned a pension and should get it, but there is no reason we (the taxpayers) cannot change it going forward'... that then brings out the negative responses from the other side etc. etc. etc...

Others have said it should not be the taxpayer who has to bail out a bad system.... if it is a bad system... the spiking, double (or even triple) dipping, getting retirement money and then getting paid to do the same job as a consultant... or some that have COLAs that are not really COLAs.... I remember someone saying they get 3% no matter what inflation is doing...


I am guessing here, but I would say a good number of people say let's change the system to one where the amount of money put aside is fixed and the person (and the entity) will know what they have... there is a pot of money when the person retires that is based on lifetime earnings.... no spiking, no getting a large pension because you got a promotion your last 3 years etc. etc... there is no contingent liability hanging out there...


Again, not a pension hater, but someone who would like to see them reformed and make sense...

 

[ziggy29]

I am surprised that porky has not yet come....

Porky has been sitting on the sidelines warming up and ready to "come in" but hasn't yet. Pensions are very much tied into the early retirement hopes of many, whether you are looking to receive one or feeling like your own may be delayed because you don't have one and you feel like shoring up public pensions may delay it further. (These are not the only positions, obviously; just more or less the "poles" from which more middling positions can also be derived.) It's recognized that this is a contentious issue, one that can blow up and end really badly if people start letting anger and emotion rule the day.

But they are very much tied to retirement in general and FIRE in particular, so we're hesitant to bring out The Pig as long as the usual rules about civility and such are followed. We did feel some cleanup was necessary in another recent thread regarding pensions, so some deletions were made there.

Earlier there was a question as to why the OP was allowed to stay. I'd say perhaps because it wasn't calling anyone out in particular but expressing what they felt was a frustration (one that I *personally* thought was a little over the top, speaking personally and not as a moderator). If it all blew up we would have had to go back and do a lot of toxic cleanup, but for the most part I think you can all pat yourselves on the back for the fact that it stayed calm and civil enough that it wasn't deemed immediately necessary.

[And just as a reminder, questions about moderator decisions (not aimed at you, TP, but at any and all) should be brought up via PM to a member of the Moderator Team and not discussed out in a public forum. Thanks!]

 

[kyounge1956]

I don't have a problem with public pensions.

I have a problem with public employees that spike their last year of service with huge amounts of overtime, vacation time, accrued sick time, and then that one year becomes the basis for a lifetime of payouts. (snip)

Spiking | Calpensions

Looking Twice at Pension Double-Dipping

What percentage of public employees get to do this. I would say 1% or less.

I don't know if the percentage is as low as 1%, but I'm confident it's lower than many people think. My guess is that the mistaken impression is due to "what sells more newspapers" (or gets more page views)—that stories about public retirees who receive moderate pensions don't generate nearly as much interest as stories about those few who get more in pension than they ever did in salary, so stories about the former either don't get published, or go largely unnoticed if they do.

 

[kyounge1956]

(snip)

I have a problem with public employees who "retire" but then continue working the exact same job, now collecting a pension plus their paychecks. Double dipping.

I have a hard time getting very upset about "double dipping". Plenty of people work after retirement. Why is it worse for them to work for the same employer as before they retired, than for a different one? I don't do this myself; personally I think "retirement job" is an oxymoron. But I will confess that I'm not unbiased, as both of my parents continued to work in the same profession after they retired. My mom retired from one school district, and then substitute-taught for several years after that, and my father, an Episcopal priest, acted as interim rector for a number of parishes even after he had officially retired. Because of a move to a different state, neither of them worked for exactly the same employer as before retirement—my mom was in a different school district and my dad in a different diocese. But would it have been so awful if they'd done the same thing, only without the move?