Comments on: Calif. city seeks to escape soaring pension costs
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- When you 200 qualified firefighter applicants for every opening (and would have more except for the low chance of landing a job), that tells you that the city is paying too much. People LOVE to be firefighters!
Indeed, 72% of the nation's firefighters are VOLUNTEERS.
Yes, you need some full-time paid firefighters in urban areas (ideally supplemented with volunteers), but you can get plenty of excellent applicants for literally half the price. - Reply to this comment
- Here is some more fuzzy math from Joe Nation who studies pension at Stanford. Now seeing his title, you would think his math would be relatively good, at a minimum better than that of a Police Officer. Joe, you have to 21 to become a police officer in San Jose. 21+30= 51, not 50. I for one can say I do not know of anyone who became a cop at age 21, 22, 23. Maybe one of our youngest is around 24 25. That means 54 or 55 after 30 years. That is a very small percentage of us so most do not collect their 90%. I for one wont even come close to the 90% when I retire. Fuzzy math once again by someone who is suppose to be good with numbers and simple numbers at that.
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- Politicians gave generous pension benefits to unionized workers -- up to 90 percent of their salary for life.
Note to story writer - should be rephrased as:
Democrats gave generous pension benefits to unionized workers as a political payoff for votes -- up to 90 percent of their salary for life. - Reply to this comment
- 4 empty libraries and no one using them,good planning there? Whose head is up whos rectum? Cities ran by liberal Democrats will always wind up in the red when they have no controls.
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- These pensions are ruining city and state finances. These pensions need to be dramatically pulled back, even if that means putting it on the ballot for the employers, who are the taxpayers, vote these egregious deals obsolete. The private sector has been destroyed by their changes in pensions, with most of their employers replacing them with 401k programs. Let public sector labor abide by the same expectations as the private sector.
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- Just like no one projected the downstream impact of these golden pensions - wonder what the same impact will be a few years from now after repeat bankruptcies, destroyed retirement investments, not enough viable hiring, etc. When do these lines get so long that we can't dig oursselves out? When no one can afford to retire, and no new grads can get hired, seems things are going to get a little bumpy. You have the freedom to cash in as much as you can, but it takes reinvestment to keep the wheels turning.
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- I'm not going to shed tears for San Jose any more than I'm going to shed tears for my own Chicago City Council and Illinois legislature. Just like corporations, political jurisdictions have outrageous pension liabilities PARTLY because they agreed to high pensions, but MOSTLY because they refused to FUND those pensions for the past ten, twenty, thirty years. (In Illinois, it's literally three decades!) It isn't that hard to figure out how much you need to contribute each year, but too many politicians (of both parties) would rather kick the can down the road....
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- It's funny how unions want a share of the revenues when there are revenues, but wouldn't share in the losses when there is a loss. Selfish.
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- Cops in California are paid about double what they are in the majority of the nation. For example, starting salary Mo. Highway Patrolman about $39,000. In the city in which I live there are 4 police sergeants who made more money last year than the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal employee and people out here complain about federal employees being overpaid. I'm a federal pensioner, retired nuclear engineer, my takehome pension is $1750 a month after health insurance, taxes, and survivor benefits for my wife are taken out. The chief police's pension around $140,000 a year. Ridiculous.
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- As for me, some of them policemen on horseback look mighty fine to me!!!
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