kyounge1956
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2008
- Messages
- 2,171
(snip)Compared to rest of society, public servants are overrepresented on this forum. For the rest of us, we generally have significant saving compared to the rest of the country. Meaning we are actually able to pay of higher taxes without having to make huge sacrifices. So if you detect some anger on this forum you would be right, but I suspect it is nothing compared to what you hear at tea party convention.
To personalize the numbers a bit, I'll have to fork over roughly $30K to properly funded Hawaii's pension plans (10K for the pension and 20K for the completely unfunded medical liability). I actually have the money to fork it over, most of my fellow citizen don't. 30K *4 SWR=$1,200 or $100/month. Now if you ask me to give up $100/month for the rest of my life, than I think it is entirely reasonable for me to ask you to give up things, like they are doing in Colorado and accept a 2% COLA instead 3.5%.
You say because you would be giving up $100 a month, I (as a prospective public pension recipient) should be willing to give up something too. This is ignoring the fact that government employees and retirees pay taxes just like everyone else.
(snip)
Do you really want to stand by that comment? What % of OR taxpayers are in state pension programs? I won't even go through an example, the flaw in that logic is far too obvious at anything below 100%.
-ERD50
Yes I do. With a single exception, a public employee and a private sector worker will pay the same amount toward a hypothetical future taxpayer-funded bailout (supposing for the moment that they have the same earnings etc). They would both be paying to prop up a system (the public pension or the PBGC) from which they derive no personal benefit. The single exception is a bailout of the system from which one is receiving or expects to receive a pension, and that's a mirror image: either the private-sector employee would be paying to support a public pension system which s/he doesn't participate in, or the public employee would be paying to rescue the PBGC, which doesn't cover public pensions.
The percentage of taxpayers who are in a State pension system is irrelevant IMO. A person is either in the State system or not, and the people who aren't in it include both private sector workers and employees of government entities other than the State. If there were a taxpayer funded bailout of the state system, members of both groups would pay even though none of them are eligible to draw a State pension. Whether public or private sector, they are in exactly the same position as far as the State system is concerned.