rickair7777

My wife is salary, she can enhance her retirement by taking a higher paying job at the end. Our friend the Fire Batt Chief worked all kinds of OT in his last years for that reason, but he would have been under the old rules.

Regardless it's worth highlighting because the voting public is typically unaware of these sorts of sweet deals that civil service unions have been granted by their pet political cronies. Not limited to CA either. These systems need to be fair, consistent, and modest without juicy loopholes. You want sweet bank, go private sector and take your chances.

Qotsaautopilot

I honestly don’t mind as a taxpayer with no connection to the public sector other than that. I do feel a full career should be put in. Public sector jobs in some places are the only jobs with that actually have a retirement outside of SS. If you want to know why Bernie is so popular it’s because the private sector doesn’t take care of workers anymore. You’re told work hard and work your way up but fact is only a few can make it to the top and the middle is just getting by because the private sector doesn’t want to pay them good benefits and retirement. Poor elderly are going to be a major problem moving forward imo.

I think Bernie would be a disaster for the country but you have to take an honest look at the private sector and realize why he’s so popular. And instead of demonizing people with good public sector jobs maybe let’s think about how to bring private sector jobs up to that level instead of bringing the public workers down.

jumppilot

Agreed. We are where we are politically because many good jobs are gone, and those jobs that are good have seen their benefits eroded.

With the profits airlines have made these last few years, they could have restored a partial pension to retirees or some other scheme.

But they don’t. They do stock buy backs. And it isn’t just the airlines.

I’m not a Bernie Bro, but I understand why he is popular. People are tired of getting the shaft.

Dhood84

CALPERS is killing the state. My father in law was under the old system (LA County Fire Captain 30 years). He is over 100K a year and has insurance for life. Now is his quality of life ****, of course, he’s taking $10K worth of prescriptions to keep him alive, but still getting paid well after all these years. The system has changed as others have said, but the union employees are killing the state financially, especially since there has been a influx of retirements the last 10+ years.

DH

Excargodog

And as bad as California is with “public service” pensions, Illinois is even worse.

Bluesideup1

The public sector used to have those kind of services but when the chickens came home to roost it bankrupted most of them. Anyone with half a brain knows you can't keep paying multiple people for doing the same job after they have retired. This is why California is in over a TRILLION dollars of pension debt. This is also why those Berners with feeble minds and give me all the "free" stuff I can get will never understand until it is too late and bankrupt the entire country.

This doesn't mean that those who were promised these pensions should have them voided. It just means that we are now seeing what these back room deals which should be between two rivals is instead of the union scratching the back of the politician who in turn gives them these sweetheart deals. This is why government unions should be abolished as there is no accountability when it fails.

Any current government workers should be put on a 401k with predefined matching numbers to not only encourage those people who can retire after 20 years to stay longer but to get the taxpayer off the dole for those who retired and no longer serving the community.

galaxy flyer

Those that think the private sector pensions are gone because of evil corporations, need to study ERISA. The 1974 law made pensions really expensive and added a regulatory burden. Public sector pensions are under no such burden of funding or regulation.

FXLAX

Or at least, not be able to negotiate compensation. It’s not really the union’s fault. They are just trying to get the best deal possible. But when the other side of the negotiating table doesn’t have an incentive to keep costs low, there is no immediate accountability/consequences.

full of luv

In 2000 Delta actually petitioned the IRS to put in "extra" contributions to the pilots/employees pensions because due to the high value of the Stock market, ERISA calcutations at the time said the funds were on target or even slightly overfunded. The FEDs said NO, pay taxes on that money, no pension contributions allowed, and within a few short years......well we know how that ended.

Excargodog

From the Orange County Register:


https://www.ocregister.com/2020/02/2...ore-tax-hikes/