No, my view is that "just a promise" was not factually true, just a rhetorical choice and "attacking" could be viewed as "inflammatory" when in fact I disagreed with him and pointed out my disagreement on his choice of language.
To be clear, one can seem to be "factual" when choosing language that seems non-inflammatory, but "just a promise" is no more non-inflammatory than "lie."
But then my degree is in the humanities.
Using apparently non-loaded language is loaded language; I'm sure you will disagree, but that's how bureaucracies work. This is not an attack on you or ERD, just a point about the choice of language and how this works as an argument when it seems "non-argumentative" to some.
I realize most won't agree with me.
All language is argumentative and thus inflammatory, if you choose to view it as such. I don't. The whole point is to register a point of view and respond. I take ERD's view and yours quite seriously, and in fact I probably agree with a lot of it. But I don't agree with "just a promise." That's bureaucratic non-inflammatory language for "default," or my minister father would have called it a "lie"--but he was just a minister.
So allow me to explain my language more fully. First though, I did see your comment about
"states are quite happy to renege after the children are educated" as somewhat inflammatory/judgmental. I'm imploring posters to stick to the
facts so this thread doesn't get closed. They kept the promise or they didn't - fact. Let's not presume anyone is "happy" about it. OK?
And let me explain "promise" - again, just a fact. I'm not implying that is any justification for not keeping the promise. Promises should be kept. But the
fact is - is someone owes me $1,000, and they walk up and plop the money in my hand, I'm set. If they promise to pay me $1,000 at the end of the month, that's just a promise, and it is worth less, and subject to not being fulfilled. I need to recognize that, and not spend my $1,000 until I collected it. OK? And maybe that person had every intention of paying me at the end of the month, maybe he didn't "lie" at all. But then something happens, and he doesn't have the money as planned. He isn't happy, he wanted to keep his promise, but he couldn't, the money wasn't there.
Well, yes, states could elect to have you in SS 30 years ago if you were a K-12 teacher. Almost all states didn't, but let's not get that detail in the way of an argument.
So I don't think you have responded to how states can screw K-12 teachers who don't qualify for SS, 30 years after the fact, although of course they should have seen this coming in 1975, to be sure,...
OK, let's discuss that. As I understand it, for several years IL did not make the payments into the pension system that it was supposed to, a large source of the problem. It appears the Unions really were not looking out for the teachers at that time. Not having SS makes these people more dependent on this state pension. So when the state isn't making payments, shouldn't that raise a RED, RED flag? We don't need to wait 30 years for the chickens to come home to roost if we see payments aren't being made at the time.
My Occam's Razor explanation is based on that analogy I made a while back - the TV or car company coming after you 20 years later, asking for more money for the old TV/car. If those companies raised the prices at the time, you would have objected and acted accordingly. So I think Occam says that the Unions/politicians
agreed not to fund the pensions, as to do so would mean raising taxes and they didn't want to do that, as it would draw attention to the level of benefits these pensions provided. Instead, they said just kick the can down the road, State pensions in IL are constitutionally protected, they'll have to pay 30 years from now.
All I can tell you is, if I saw that my employer told me they would match my 401K contributions annually to the first 3%, but the money wasn't showing up in the account, I would heavily discount that matching amount in my retirement plans. That's the writing on the wall. And it appears the IL State Unions had the walls written on for them, and they chose to ignore it, and expect the taxpayers to make it all alright. I'm saying, they need to take some responsibility as well.
Not only do they not have SS (more accurately, their Union, speaking for them, agreed with the State to exclude them from paying into SS), but they never paid into any form of pension insurance, like me and my company did (PBGC). Where is the responsibility? As we often say, no one cares more about your money than you.
-ERD50
