[quote=ctr70]Military pensions are nowhere close to the “fat cat” pensions cops and firefighters get ($100k a year pensions often!). I know people who will have 25 years of service in the military as enlisted and only get $2,500/mo. To me that is reasonable. It’s the $100k+ cartoonish pensions many public workers are getting that are scandalous.
I’m not against pensions that are *self-sustaining* and do NOT draw on taxpayer money. I AM against *the taxpayer backstopping up pensions*. Many pensions assume a 7-8% return in order to make their promised payouts. When those returns don’t happen, the taxpayer has to come in and make up the difference. I have a 401k in the private sector…does the taxpayer back up my 401k if the market crashes??? NO! Of course not. I just have to live with less, that is my risk. So why the hell should we taxpayers back up public pensions???
Unions, collective bargaining and public pensions took a BIG hit last week with the elections in San Diego, San Jose and Wisconsin. The American people are sending a clear message now that it is being exposed how public pensions are ripping off the taxpayer and sucking the lifeblood out our schools, parks and cities to pay a few fat cat retirees their ridiculous pensions.
I would like to ask anyone who is pro “status quo” with the current pension set ups. What do you have against public employees having standard 401k’s like the private sector? What do you have against the taxpayer not backing up pension shortfalls?[/quote]
First, let’s stop with the myth of $100K pensions for most firefighters and cops. The vast majority of public safety officers don’t get anywhere near that. Again, only ~2% of CalPERS retirees gets $100K or more.
Second, military retirees qualify for these pensions after 20 years of service, and many of them can find new careers because military personnel are given priority in many hiring situations. That’s not the case with firefighters and cops who almost always retire much later in life than the military retirees and don’t have jobs that they can easily transfer into because of the specialized nature of their jobs.
As for the military pensions being “self-sustaining”:
“Military retiree benefits cost the Pentagon $50 billion a year. That’s more than next year’s entire budget for the Department of Homeland Security. There are 1.9 million military retirees drawing pay and benefits, compared to 1.5 million in the active duty force. In 2010, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said those costs are “eating the Defense Department alive.”
(To be clear, veterans are those who have served in the military; they receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Military retirees are those who serve 20 years or more — it is their benefits that are often seen as unsustainable.)
“Military retirees who are working age … for a family plan you pay $460 a year, [and] that covers you and all of your dependents,” says Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C. “And if you’re single, it’s $230 a year.”
When military retirees reach age 65 and are eligible to go on Medicare, they get something called TRICARE, a Medicare supplemental insurance plan, Harrison says. It covers everything Medicare doesn’t cover. The cost: It’s free. In addition to that, retirees also receive pensions. Depending on the rank of the retiree, the pension can be a couple thousand dollars a month or more.
To understand why these benefits are so expensive, you have to think about when military retirees start collecting them. Unlike private sector employees, who don’t receive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare until they are 65 years old, military retirees generally begin collecting benefits in their 40s. The average age of officers when they retire is 47, Harrison says. The average age of enlisted soldiers when they retire is 43.
Now, I’m most certainly not against military pensions and benefits; just trying to point out that your assumptions regarding the “self-sustaining” nature of the pensions are being pulled out of thin air, and that the military retirees are even **younger** than those who retire from most other govt jobs where the average retirement age is 60 (see “next door neighbor was a cop…” thread for citations and more info). If they get govt jobs after retiring, which is very common, they can rake in far more than a regular cop, firefighter, teacher, etc. ever will.
