FREE MONEY!
Never let the government unionize against the people.
Government unions are a unified massive voting block that elects the government officials who then are the ones who negotiate against the union.
And the Illinois Supreme Court has already ruled that the state constitution does not allow any diminishment of a government employee’s pension. So unless the state amends the constitution (and that ain’t happening with Democrats in total control) there is no ability to reduce any of these outrageous pensions by a single cent.
Isn’t that haw it is supposed to work in a banana republic. Government workers have the best of everything. and the government workers at the top have the best of the best of everything. At the top of that particular food chain you find names like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe 81millionvotes Biden & George Bush.
Unbelievable. Plus they probably get full medical, dental and life insurance, to boot.
with all these huge wages nowadays and huge pensions, I feel that our once upper middle class income, now that we are retired, puts us lower and lower into the low income group.....
well at least maybe I can get some free cheese somewhere...
When I signed up, I picked the investment option that paid 8% regardless of what bonds and stocks did. If they returned more than 8%, then I would participate in a portion of that good experience. I never could understand how they could wipe out all those bad years and find a way to get 8% anyway. But I had only an MBA in Finance and obviously these people were a lot smarter.
For comparison, if beginning at age 22 you invested $360/month until age 58, you would have invested a total of $164,000. If your investments averaged 10% annual ROI, then the balance at age 58 would be $1,560,000. And if at that point you retired and withdrew 4% annually (a popular retirement investment withdrawal strategy) it'd start out at $57,000 the first year, then $60,000 the next year, etc. Only if you lived to be 90 would your total withdrawals be $5.5 million. However, your heirs would inherit something (unlike a pension).
The point being, even the families of people in government jobs that get pensions would be better off if they didn't put into a pension but instead invested that money.
I don’t understand the disgust over this. Every person in the United States chose a career they wanted. For those who chose a different path, are you unhappy? Why didn’t you chose this path???? Every single person in the country could have done this.
And those of us who work in the private sector, not only get to pay for these lavish pensions, but do not get ANY pensions ourselves. The 401k largely replaced pensions in the private sector decades ago.
“””Workers who spend their careers working for Illinois collect the third-most generous retirement benefits in the nation.”””
And the Illinois government bureaucrats are upset that they only get the third-most generous retirement benefits in the nation.
In the paper this week there was a picture of a hulking relative youngster city employee of 30 years retiring. Not a day over 50 and it is a defined retirement program, non-contributory.
He will be on relative easy street for decades.
When I see these same people “working” there are usually at least 3 yo 5 of them to do a one man job.
I have always felt that most government jobs should be performed by the private sector. Have the employees hired by a management firm and give them standard benefits any other worker would get. The employee would have to contribute to their 401K. If they are not up to the job they get fired. This way the chaff can be eliminated. Why shouldn’t they have to work like the rest of us.
I think Illinois will not be able to continue that. They made promises that they did not lay up the money for.