I don’t think it’s envy.
I think it is boarding on fraud.
Pension and retirement benefits were entended to help people in their twilight years and a reward for a LIFETIME of service.
Unions have distorted this, and now people are working 15 years or less in many cases and are collecting “retirement” benefits of various sorts for 60+ years for jobs they only worked at for 15. Then they repeat the process at 2 or 3 other government jobs and get that multiple times, THEN they are taking advantage of how the benefits are calculated by working 1000’s of extra hours of overtime in their final year, so that they can actually be paid MORE to retire than they were when they were working FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.
Exactly right. Pension liabilities are virtually bankrupting a number of states and localities, including California, Illinois, West Virginia and others.
Government employees (we see a few examples right here on FR), like to compare salaries, but completely disregard the enormous benefit packages they receive and how quickly they qualify for full retirement benefits.
Personally, I’m ok with most government salaries (although not the $150K cops you find in places like California, NY, Massachusetts, CT, and elsewhere), but I would scrap the pension plans and convert them to 401K plans with government match, similar to private sector plans.
These plans were NEVER designed for people to work for 20 or 25 years, and then get paid for another 30 or more after they “retire.” Plus, as you note, many don’t really retire. They collect that pension on top of another salary (usually government), sometimes earning credits toward a second pension.
And their contributions only cover a small portion of the retirement costs - taxpayer contributions cover the bulk.