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I guess that a couple of states have some massive shortfalls in their public pension funds.
I see that the state governments are completely, 100% to blame for this.
Not one iota of blame goes to the public employee unions who demanded those golden pensions or they would go on strike.
Nope, the noble Union public worker can't be at fault.
I notice that a LOT (enough to be noteworthy anyway) of these pensions pay for life and pay in full after just 15 years on the job. People as young as 37 are retiring on a full pension in some cases and looking to getting at least 40 years of being paid out at the rate of their biggest ever paycheck (and that can include that one week you did 40 hours of overtime).
Even more fun is when that 37 year old "retiree" moves to a different place, does 15 more years and retires again at 52... Got their pension and paycheck the whole time and is now getting two pensions a month.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!
They do it AGAIN and retire a third time at 67, and really retire this time, and get three checks a month.
Most of these plans include full, no out of pocket medical. Some even cover their nuclear family too.
Gee, how come the pension plans are all underfunded or broke?
I am aware that there are plans which don't start paying until you're 65 even if you did the requisite 15 years when you were 37.
There are even places that don't let you collect until you've stopped working.
I'm not sure if it's the norm, but... There's some awfully young people here in Florida who are saying they're former NYFC cops who have awfully nice houses and don't go to work every morning.
It's not like that here in Texas. My wife is a state retiree. Here people have to meet what they call the "rule of 80". Your years of service plus your age has to equal 80. There are a few other factors, like Veterans get to count their years of service in somehow by a formula I don't know. And you can also apply unused leave time to your years of service. It is possible to get retirement with only 15 years service if you start at a later age, but your amount wouldn't be much because the pension works on an annuity. You get paid based on the total amount you put in (and the state matched). The highest check you got has little to do with the amount the pension checks will be other than the total contribution. With only 15 years service unless you were very high up and high paid the whole time you're not getting much. As you say, you could do 15 years starting at an earlier age, but you wouldn't be able to collect until you hit 65 and met the rule of 80. You can't get double retirement checks either, because once you "retire" you no longer contribute to ERS even if you start working for the state again. You can collect a paycheck and a pension check though. They have talked about doing away with that by making it so if you return to work your pension checks stop and you contribute to your annuity fund until you retire again. But that hasn't passed the last couple of times it has been proposed. The only people who can "triple dip" are people who are getting a veteran or federal or other non-state pension. Or a few people who were in both the ERS and the Texas teacher's pension fund (TRS), which is a separate entity. The teacher's one sucks in comparison though.
ReplyDeleteI guess maybe there are reasons why the ERS system is stable. So much for libtards claiming how much better "blue states" are supposedly for workers than "red states".
Oh... one other reason that ERS is properly funded and stable... Legislators pensions are paid out of that system too -- so they're not gong to F it like in states where they can just bail themselves out with Tax dollars like most blue states.
-swj