Fat City (life of a sociology professor)

After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I “worked.” But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites. Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and—when it rains, it pours—another for unused sick leave. I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course, double the pay for adjuncts, which works out to over $200 an hour. Another going-away present was summer pay, one ninth of my salary, with no teaching obligation.

I haven’t done the math but I suspect that, given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech.

Why do I put “worked” in quotation marks? Because my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation: reading and writing about topics that interested me. Maybe this counts as work. But here I am today—like many of my retired colleagues—doing pretty much what I have done since the day I began graduate school, albeit with less intensity.

Before retiring, I carried a teaching load of two courses per semester: six hours of lecture a week. I usually scheduled classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays: The rest of the week was mine. Colleagues who pursued grants taught less, some rarely seeing a classroom. The gaps this left in the department’s course offerings were filled by adjuncts

I think even Aynn Rand made the point that those serving in the military were not subject to the same rules of employment as those employed elsewhere in business or for government. Their term of employment, once signed on to in an incremental fashion, did not allow them to break employment — they were not in a free market of employment “at will”.

For subjecting yourself to such service at risk to your personal safety and at the beck and call of the national interests and defense, you sacrifice a great deal of your ability to have a productive life after service to the degree that a short timer or a never-served has. For that, if you stick it out the required term, you get a “retirement” pay. It and the instance cited in this article have terms in common but not the same conditions and the two are vastly different, in my opinion.

Kipling's son died in WWI. You mock him with that vile use of his words as a cudgel. Make your own if you wish to beat me!

In any case you obviously know me not.

The widespread military pensions in the US today are a new thing. "Retirement" is a new thing. In 1880 78% of men over 65 worked. In 1920: 60%. In 1950: 47%.

In 2000: 18%!

Too many retired! Now those retired folks who rely on their own savings and fortunes do not burden the rest of us.

But those who do not have their own savings, and rely on the public weal--the PROPER word for that is CHARITY.

Friend, you are living on charity.

While there's some merit to that view, the long-term consequences of widespread lifetime government-backed pensions for any, including the military, are now found to be unbearable. Politically and socially, over time, the empensioned class gets bigger, and its pension entitlements grander, than the future can support. We are now well past that point.

In US History General Washington, at wit's end to keep his officers given the low pay the Continental Congress could come up with, cam to push for a lifetime half-pay pensions for them. But that was clearly done desperate measure on his part, and fit better the nascent (aborning) circumstance of the nation. Their service was much harsher and more to the ruin of a man's ability to earn a living in his old age--nearly all trades in those days required a decent health. Men did not live as long. The need for good officers was great, greater then than now, almost surely. And in the national birth process, those who served in the Continental Army took a huge event risk, even with a pension. Would there be a nation to make good on it?

In those more honest days, the states and the people arose against such pensions, recognizing the great danger in them.

“But those who do not have their own savings, and rely on the public weal—the PROPER word for that is CHARITY.”

Did I abide by my contract? Yes.

Did that contract include a pension? Yes.

Do I get my pension because you like me, or because you feel sorry for me? No.

I get it because you have a legal obligation, thru the government, to pay me. Not because you like me. Not because you feel sorry. But because we had a deal.

Because I kept my end of the contract, and now you need to keep yours. I’m sorry you don’t like being honest, or keeping your contracts.

When you buy a car on installments, you don’t get to quit making payments halfway through because you wrecked the car. When you make payments on your house, it isn’t charity to the bank.

“Kipling’s son died in WWI. You mock him with that vile use of his words as a cudgel.”

Nope. My Dad died in Vietnam. I spent 25 years in, and went to my fair share of funerals. And my son is in Afghanistan right now. When there is peace, everyone wants to cut from the military. But when there is trouble, they want the men in the military to go take care of things. Kipling knew that, and so do I.

You have an arrogant demand that I worship your military service, and hold it in higher regard than the services of any other citizen. In fact, that although the nation is bankrupt, many people are bankrupt and many a private business with its pensions bankrupt, and indeed that some of those pension funds are bankrupt—for example ones which invested in GM or Chrysler bonds—and those who had CONTRACTS left bereft and ruined, that nonetheless we Tommies struggle to pay you you fulsome pension and all your benefits with not any reduction.

Is that what any true military hero of this nation killed in some war died to have had happened? That you be at you luxurious leisure in a ripe old age while all mere citizens become slaves on this plantation run by Federal Retirees?

You, sir, with this attitude of entitlement that makes of mere peons of all others I hold in worse esteem than that professor of sociology and all the Marxists with him. YOU should know better.

Yes, I’m a retiree. A person who did a job in exchange for pay. I didn’t require to be paid it all up front, but agreed to be paid in installments.

And now that age has retired me, you want me to skip the remaining installments so you can have more money to spend on other things.

Sorry. We had a deal. I kept my end. You keep yours.

Yes, the government is out of money. The military didn’t make it that way. We had a balanced budget while military retirement was being paid in full. We have gone deeply into debt paying for needless spending over the last two years.

As bad as GWB was on spending, our current incredible debt is due to spending added since Obama took office.

I’ve said before on this forum and I’ll repeat: I’ll take a 50% reduction in my retired pay IF they will balance the budget tomorrow. If they will cut spending by 50%, then I will do my share.

But they are not looking at military retirement because they cannot find anything else to cut. They still insist on funding for PBS, bringing you 1 more channel out of 150. They still want expanded spending on the Dept of Education, that has never taught anyone anything. They want full funding for health care for illegals, and tuition for illegals, and they want to cut military retirement to pay for it.

To hell with that! Like anyone with holdings in a bankrupt company, I’m willing to take less than 100% - but I don’t see any other shareholder who is willing to take less than 110%!

At the hospital where my wife is a nurse, they recently did an operation on government dollars to relieve back pain in a woman who is 5’0” tall and weighs 290 lbs. They are looking at a knee operation as well. You want to know why she has back & knee pain? It is because a 5’ body wasn’t designed to haul around 290 lbs, and she’ll have pain until she shuts her mouth and loses weight.

While they are funding her operations, don’t tell me my deferred payments can’t be made. Don’t fund losses in Wall Street and tell me you can’t honor your contract with me. I see no sign anyone is serious about dealing with government spending. All I see are people who wanted me to go in harms way when I was younger, who now want me to do without so they can keep paying for Big F’n Bird!

After taxes, my retirement pay has gone down each year for 3 years. As part of a package to cut government spending by 50% this year, I’d take a 50% cut. But all I see right now are people coming after the retirement pay I EARNED - it was part of my contract - and they are doing so to give them more money to pay for illegal immigrants, wasteful medical spending on poor but morbidly fat people, and college professors who don’t teach squat.

“That you be at you luxurious leisure in a ripe old age while all mere citizens become slaves on this plantation run by Federal Retirees?

You, sir, with this attitude of entitlement that makes of mere peons of all others I hold in worse esteem than that professor of sociology and all the Marxists with him.”

You had a contract with me. Keep it.

Yes, I have an attitude of entitlement. Why? Because someone who fulfills their end of a contract is ENTITLED to have the other side fulfill theirs.

I kept my word. I despise those who want to break theirs. What part of the word “contract” do you not understand?

The pension liability issues of each and every instance are certainly worthy of debate. All public policy is worthy of debate.

But debate on policy is vastly different from taking the stance that as our forebearers did not conduct the debate and we cannot get the debate engaged, it is then our privelege to claim that public policy and lawful agreements should not be honored and failing that, that those that recieve their end of such agreements are failing in principle or conduct because they take that which they are legally entitled to receive.

To take that position is to fail to acknowledge that the falut lies in our countymen and ourselves from policies we have allowed to be put in place. We cannot avoid the fact that we, and our predecessors in our tradition, have failed to instill the virtues of our nation in our own fellow citizens and the correction of that failing does not begin by faulting them all for our shortcomings and poor attention.

I believe there is a general problem with contracts about the future. I’m not talking the near future, where “near” is meant in context to the subject of the contract. Perhaps by “near” one might apply “foreseeable”, but people are not good at estimating the foreseeability of the future.

When the US passed its first military pension in 1778, it allowed half pay for seven years after the war’s end. Seven years, fourteen years — these are lengths of contract time found in general uses going back to biblical times.

The Bible itself, with the concept of the 50 year jubilee cycle suggests that the ability to set the duration of contract tines between men should not get beyond that.

Politicians in negotiations with state and local worker unions such as the SEIU and the teacher unions, or in pandering to large workforces—such as the military—make promises they simply cannot in good faith make. And those who accept such agreements are equally at fault.

Why? Because overly lavish entitlements, expensive pensions, are made too far into the future, and capture the wealth and works of those not even born yet! It’s theft. I say it is an intrinsically illegal form of contract, as it commits too much in a time frame that the current leaders of the current generation can not reasonably foresee.

“...before you will say no to being on the dole and taking the yoke off of the less fortunate and the young. That is not a great service in the cause of Liberty, is it?”

You are still too blind or stupid to see the difference between being ‘on the dole’ and EARNING your pay.

I’m not ‘on the dole’ - “a dealing out or distributing, especially in charity”. I am collecting past due pay. It isn’t a gift from you to me. It is what you OWE me for services rendered.

My daughter had dental work done. The dentist COULD have insisted on $5000 up front. Instead, we pay him for 30 months.

Those payments to him are not charity. He is not ‘on the dole’. They are payments for work already done. Only a crook or a thief, at this point, would say, “Your work is past, so I won’t finish paying you!”

And that is what you are saying, so you must be a crook or a thief. A swindler. Someone who promises payment, then refuses to make it. Or in your case, someone who makes it under threat of law, since you don’t have enough honesty to fulfill your contracts any other way.

“or in pandering to large workforces—such as the military—make promises they simply cannot in good faith make. And those who accept such agreements are equally at fault.”

You seem to think military pay is something given to encourage votes. It is not. It is given to encourage people to volunteer to go to nasty places and do nasty things while at risk of their lives. In exchange, you can sit on your butt in freedom, protected by their actions.

We could require military service. As a country, we decided long before I entered the military to get volunteers instead. To do that, pay and retirement were required. The LAWS governing my pay and retirement were passed and signed before I entered the military.

It is obvious you don’t want to keep faith with the retired military because it would be cheaper for you to renege on the contract. Screw you! You enjoyed the benefit of my service while I was in, and you can pay me the balance due now that I am out.

“I say it is an intrinsically illegal form of contract, as it commits too much in a time frame that the current leaders of the current generation can not reasonably foresee.”

You might want to look up the military redux retirement pay debacle. Some years after I entered, retirement pay was changed. Years later, they folks who entered under that system got out. In mass. They simply did not have the incentive to stay in for a career.

Congress, in response to a critical failure in retention, changed their retirement system to match the one I entered under. Not because Congress wanted their votes, but because it wanted their continued service.

Again, military retirement is a contract. It is a shame someone on FreeRepublic wants to cheat on that contract, robbing those who risked their lives to make the republic free. And yes, my life was at risk many times. My last combat deployment was to Afghanistan on the ground at 49. I also spent some time after that in a South American country where nasty people would have liked to kidnap me.

And I did it trusting the US government and the American people. I believed then (and now) that they will uphold their end of the bargain. But I am ashamed a fellow Freeper wants to cheat me instead. That is disgusting.

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