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Class Warfare Hypocrisy
- Thread starter Arnie Guitar
- Start date
Quote from Arnie Guitar:
The right loves to accuse the left of promoting class warfare. "Tax the rich, they're the bad guys, they can afford more taxes, those greedy bastards, etc."
But...(you knew there'd be a but), all I here from the right is "government workers bad, teachers bad, Unions bad, etc...overpaid, to many benefits, the same job pays less in the private sector...etc."
That isn't class warfare?
If being a teacher is such a great gig, apply for the job. If being a government worker is such a great gig, apply for it.
As you can probably guess, I am one of the bad government workers. I retired at 49, and the pension check started right up, along with my health insurance. I'm special? My job was advertised in the local paper, anyone could have applied for it. ANYONE. 127 did, and at 23, I got the job as a manual machinist. I had no "In" at the company, no Dad, Uncle or Cousin pulling strings to give the job to me. As a matter of fact, I beat out people with an "In". I aced the written and the practical. The tester was going to leave me alone to do the practical, I told him to stick around, it wasn't going to take long.
Now don't tell me my health insurance was/is free, I just never held or saw the money. I got the pension and health insurance in lieu of wages.
My(every) employer had a hard number that was available for me, let's say that number is $20 an hour. That number had the cost of funding the pension and paying the insurance in it. For round numbers, let's say they knew my pension and insurance were going to cost $5/hr. That means they could only afford to offer me $15/hr.
They could have said we only can pay you $20/hr, and go and buy your own pension and insurance, but they chose to play on the uninformed and make people think they aren't paying for their own pension and insurance, but they are, they just don't handle the money.
Don't tell me my insurance and pension was/is free, I paid for it, I just didn't handle the money.
Without knowing the specifics of your retirement benefits and funding, the general tone of your post is FULL OF SHIT nationwide to include all fed ,state and county employees/ future retirees.
1) The ability to retire at age 49 is relatively rare for those in the private sector especially going forward with the demise of pensions.
The demise of pensions in the private sector fully reflects the fiscal unsustainable nature of the guaranteed pension system.
To the extent that govt workers have been shielded from the fiscal realities thus far only underlines the fact that govt operates at the expense of the tax payer. Govt pay & bennnies is only limited by the essentially unilateral contract (threat) of force or violence on the public vs cooperative contract in the private sector.
2) Pensions that pay an income stream 50-60% (and more) of pre- retirement salary would require a huge asset base of fixed (safe securities).
It's not sustainable in the private sector without huge savings rates nor is it sustainable for the sheer volume of govt workers now employed.
3) The demise of unsustainable lucrative govt pensions is inevitable.
Implied promises will not be kept. I've seen govt workers all get raises of 8% in one year, and 30% of those same workers get laid off 6 months later.
Early on I recognized the promises of future leisure and reward were going to be highly uncertain in their arrival or duration.
I congratulate you on making a wise career choice and you do deserve what you were promised contractually.
You do need to come to grips with the likely reality that for the work you performed you reaped far higher returns than your private cohort and that situation writ large cannot continue.
Right now our military is famous for not finding Bin Laden...
Any other brilliant statements you want to make?
Any other brilliant statements you want to make?
Quote from 151:
No, I do not. But I do believe that the military also knows this and they react accordingly with the philosophy the military is famous for.
That cannot be said, as far as I know, for most sectors of the government.