Posted on 02/13/2011 10:00:14 AM PST by Leisler
May 2009. Back then there were 3,010 retirees earning $100,000 or more annually from CalSTRS. Earlier this month, the foundation obtained updated data from CalSTRS and the number has grown to 5,308 (5,309 if you count one woman earning $99,998.88). That’s a 76 percent increase. In less than two years. And that’s not all. The foundation, run by President Marcia Fritz, also requested a list of CalSTRS retirees earning $75,000 or more annually. Guess how many CalSTRS pensioners are earning between $75,000 and $99,999.99. 19,503. Combined you’re looking at 24,811 retired California teachers earning more than $75,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at taxdollars.ocregister.com ...
I think some of these teachers are gettign out while the gettin’ is good
The curious thing is that they all think this game will just continue on with no stopping. The day will come when a vast amount of their expected pension is chopped off and reality will come quickly to a group of folks with serious bills to pay.
I’m a teacher, and I actually worked one year in the Golden Wasteland before running out there screaming.
I fully expect my pension to be looted by the same government that is supposed to protect and honor it. My wife and I are setting aside our own nest egg with that in mind. Frankly, I also expect my district to come up to me one day and tell me that there’s good news and bad news: the good news is that you still have a job, but the bad news is that you’re getting a 30 percent pay cut. We ready for that, too.
If by some miracle Pres. Palin, or Bachman, or West manage to straighten out affairs before the collapse, we’re still ready. I don’t think the cleanup crew will come in soon enough, though.
Location, location, location.
My daughter teaches in a more conservative part of the country and she’s conservative too. Her salary after 10 years of teaching and a masters degree is $42,000.
I don’t begrudge some teachers making a nice retirement, the problem is that the funds were not set aside during the teacher’s earning years. So the public has to pick up the tab via taxation. CalSTRS made risky bets in the stock market and at times even had workers defer their payments into their own plan (when the stock market was going crazy). When the market corrected itself the pension plan went under water. But all plans did not fail in the same way. Some managers did not have all investments in the market— they diversified and did well for their clients.
We have a great need today for programs to start paying for themselves. A pension system like a 401 K plan does this. Social security does not. Teachers retirement systems allow teachers to opt out of social security and save on their own. It is the fault of the managers of these investments that they were not more conservative.
This becomes the left’s battle cry when we talk about privatizing the social systems called entitlements. They say we did not manage our pension fund well, so it is dangerous to place the retirement of everyone in the hands of non-government advisors.
I, on the other hand, managed to build my retirement without the government’s help. It can be done.
Paying people more in retirement than double the average salary is pure thievery and immoral. The taxes required to fund this insanity are only going up and destroying the nation.
Civil unions raping the tax payers.
It would be one thing if these teachers actually earned their pensions but their work product has resulted in dropping literacy rates.
You would not pay a plumber who does not fix your leak, why pay these teachers if they can’t teach?
If you have not already done so, request a rollover of your Cal pension into a personal IRA. There will be no tax consequences for doing this, and you can pick safe conservative investments (based on your age for example) and keep the State of California from sharing your pension funds with their other clients. I did this when I left teaching, it will take some work and paperwork because they are not really interested in you doing this, but they will eventually send your money directly to your IRA account.
Thanks for the tip. We do have one year down there mouldering, and rolling it over into our personal retirement sounds good. We appreciate the tip. If you’re ever in this section of Alaska, we’ll put a moose steak on the barbecue.
Your point is well taken, but all teachers are not bad or lazy— but the system does not encourage the cream of the crop to go into or stay in teaching positions. Hence my other profession as an Engineer.
However, I agree with you. The pension is the topic here, but the level of integrity and skill in the teaching profession is not where it could be if teachers were allowed (and required) to contract with their districts every few years — and the pay set by the skill and work ethic demonstrated. I am talking about doing away with “tenure”.
People who realize how the system really works should be voting to change it. Why should a salary be equal for everyone with the same seniority? Why should it be so difficult to fire a teacher that it is almost never done?
And why, when a family has a choice between good and bad schools nearby should the bad school be left open?
BTW, I realize there are other factors — that the teacher’s union uses to hide behind — like parents and kids who do not care (or are not mature enough) to care. But the public can do something about the teachers. I do not know what a conservative can do to assist a failing parent. There has to be a limit to the power of government.
I will visit Alaska one day. I have tried several times to get up the courage to RV up north. (Not enough dents in the trailer so far.)
But I do want to leave this nutty state— even if I am tied here by family and business.
I drove up camping out of a cap in a slant 6 Dodge shortbed. Easy. It’s even easier now as it is all paved, vs good gravel back then. At the time I saw two old fatty biker couple on a Harley hard tail. Now those were some hard people. My advice? Little 4 cylinder SW. Sleep in the back, coolers, cook stove, treat your self to a room and a shower once a week. You’ll fit right in, in the high fashion culture of Alaska.
The tick is bigger than the cow. The cow is on it’s knees, white, foaming at the mouth. The tick is pissed they blood isn’t flowing like it used to, so it is borrowing in deeper looking for sustenance.
Me? I don’t pay unless the tick makes me, somehow. I consider it my patriotic, moral, ethical duty to deny collaboration with the enemy, i.e. other Americans.
It’s the mandates from state houses and DC that has destroyed the teaching experience that I enjoyed as a student many years ago...
Russian tanks were five miles out side of Berlin and Hitler was telling Germans to keep fighting. Meanwhile staff were tossing their uniforms and heading for lock boxes in Switzerland.
Old story.
Don’t trust the Dems, RINO’s.
Especially don’t trust me. I don’t trust me and I live with me. Honest, trust me. :)
there was an article just before the 2008 crash,
stating that the only people buying houses in orange county
were the rich, foreigners, and california union members.
Try running a small business and having the state employee antifundamentalist tell you you have to hire his friend/wife/retired state environmentalist to review, inspect, defend, report on bla, bla, bla that they all ginned up to keep them in work in the state and like lawyers afterwards, employed with their pensions defending/interpreting what they wrote when they were in.
And write them checks.
Then do this with OSHA, IRS, Federal/State/County/Town like mafia coming around finding this or that in ‘non compliance’.
So not only do you not like your work, your business anymore, but you get to go bankrupt with zip, nada, zero.
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