Pentagon Considers Scrapping Traditional Military Pensions

Fox News Online ^ | 8/15/2011 | Jim Crogan

[muawiyah]

You are an idiot. I was an employee of the USPS and my salary traced back to private sources who were paying a fee to have USPS deliver mail all over the country.

BTW, every other day a letter carrier had to fight off your mother's molestation of him ~ it was the short pants ~ just drove women like that crazy.

[sten]

postal... ROTFLMAO

yea, that was money well spent

oops, i hope i didn’t unsettle you. don’t want you going all postal. keeping up with your meds?

USPS, replaced by email in a blink.

i guess what was in the shorts was found to be ... lacking.

[muawiyah]

Hardly ~ mail volume is still comparable to fin de' siecle.

At the moment, however, USPS is going to have to realize the rest of the picture regarding productivity improvement.

With a 20% volume loss they can no longer hide the fact that they have about 250,000 too many employees.

I will do what I can to cut back your service so that you are among the first to find out who the leaches on the system really are!

[sten]

oh please.. don’t threaten me.. oh gosh... what would i do if the usps stopped shipping me daily spam?

ever since my first trip overseas, i’ve had a ups po box... and i’ll never go back. the usps couldn’t even handle a po box properly. the kids @ the ups store had no troubles with it... and have had my business for years.

these days the only thing i receive are mostly packages. everything else is electronic. i can’t even remember the last letter i sent.

usps ... buggy whips

[GATOR NAVY]

I think that this sort of idea, if well conceived, can do better for both the taxpayer and our serving men and women. So I won't throw stones until I learn the details.

I agree. It's possible it could work to be better than the current system. One number that's thrown around in the article is that the pension is 50% of salary at 20 years retirement. The fine print is that it is 50% of your base pay. The DoD likes to pay a lot of compensation in the form of allowances and specials pays. These count nothing toward figuring retirement pay. My 60% of base pay retirement check after 24 years is closer to 30% of my actual paycheck when I was active duty.

[muawiyah]

You don't subscribe to Rush Limbaugh's Newsletter?

Really strange.

[jwalsh07]

If I were king:

All personnel would be eligibile for 401K's with the same matching that non military government employees get, be that up to 0 or 5%.

All current military would remain on the 20 year/half base pay plan.

Future military would would see that 20 years gradually change to 25 years for half base pay retirement.

As service is completed for retirees they can opt for the 401K plus government contribution or take the half base pay and whatever contributions they made separate from matching contributions.

Any extra years to full retirement could be offset by the chevrons on the soldiers right sleeve. IOW's every 6 month tour in a combat zone reduces your time to retirement by 6 months with 20 years being the floor.

Life expectancy would seem to demand we all have to work or serve longer if we aren't going to bankrupt our kids.

I could be convinced that 25 years is too long if somebody has statistics showing that retired military do not live as long as the general civilian population.