[quote=harvey][quote=SK in CV] I never said the ballot initiative changes nothing. I never said that 401Ks and pensions are the same. Does those lies really further your argument?[/quote]
The problem with this dialog is that you aren’t saying anything of substance. You constantly respond to my points but avoid the core question. You don’t seem to want to discuss the distinction between pensions and 401Ks, and have only emphasized the one thing they have in common (that they are technically labeled “deferred.”)
You are just asking leading questions, nit-picking trivial details, and making one-line, unsubstantiated claims, e.g. “…because they’re not.”
And YOU brought SS into the discussion, in a rather misleading way by ignoring the age differences, which is a key distinction between public/private sector (more on that below…)
Can you actually state your position on what should be done about public-sector pensions, or are you only capable of taking shots at the positions of others?
[quote]And nice job changing the subject on the SS benefits. Just to repeat, earlier you said that workers have to wait until 67 to collect social security. When the truth is, no one will have to wait until 67 until 2027. Are we talking about pensions today or pensions 15 years from now?[/quote]
You’ve taken the distortion to a new level of bullshit with that one.
The answer to your question is that we are talking about both pensions today and pensions 15 years from now – that is the very definition of the problem!
Read the title of the thread again, or let me spell it out to you:
We are talking about the people retiring today in the public sector who are the same age as people on the private sector who won’t receive benefits for another fifteen years.
Many 52 year-old public-sector workers can retire today, or are already retired. A 52 year-old private sector employee will have to wait until they are 67 – guess what year that will be!
Ya see, there’s a difference – a big one!
Why?[/quote]
This has already been addressed, above.
You need to take people who are retiring at a given point in time, from both the public and private sectors, and compare retirement ages and benefits for those retirees. I’ve already posted above that the average age for CalPERS retirees is 60. The average age at retirement for SS recipients is 62-64. In other words, they are retiring an average of 2-4 years older than public employees, they are NOT retiring 15-17 years later, no matter how many times you try to repeat it.
You’re taking an outlier from the public sector (a very small portion who can retire at 50), and comparing it with another outlier from the private sector (those who will retire at 67, and no sooner, maybe — see average retirement age for SS recipients)…sometime in the future.
“Workers are now retiring at older ages because the incentives to retire have changed. Since the mid-1990s, the average retirement age has risen from 62 to 64 for men and from 60 to 62 for women, according to a new Center for Retirement Research at Boston College analysis of Census Bureau data.”
The average monthly benefit for SS retirees is $1,230 [see link below this paragraph], while the average benefit for CalPERS retirees is $1,673.82 [from my post and link, above]. The retirement benefit amount for the SS recipient does NOT include other retirement benefits/plans they might have received through their employers.
One more time, you are also trying to compare an insurance program with deferred compensation. SS is not supposed to be a retiree’s sole source of income, it’s supposed to **supplement** their retirement income. The deferred compensation negotiated for with the DB plans is a stand-alone plan. The employers do not normally offer any other retirement compensation, like matching retirement contributions to a 457/401k plan. Also, as stated many times before, most public employees **do not get SS benefits.** Their DB pension benefits are all they get.
*In some cases, they might get SS benefits if they qualify because of private sector employment, but their benefits are reduced if they qualify for both SS and DB benefits. Also, if they had that many years in the private sector, they are not likely to have maxed out their years of service for the DB plan, so it’s unlikely those “excessive” benefits would apply in those cases, anyway.
BTW, you keep talking about public employees being able to retire at 50, but do you realize that it’s not even possible for them to max out their service credit unless they started working at age 20 (which is VERY unlikely)? That’s why most employees who *could* qualify for retirement at 50 (which is a very small portion of the public workforce) usually work longer than that in order to max out the service credits.
Very few public employees are able to retire at 50, and of those who can, an even smaller number are able to max out their retirement benefits at that age.
