[quote=paramount]CA Renter: I don’t think many people are questioning the sacrifice of firefighters and police and the issues they face; but honestly do you get that California is broke?
And that a significant part of why we are broke is because of the excessive total compensation of gov’t workers across the board?
I’m not sure how to make that fact any plainer.
[/quote]
The state pension funds were fully funded just a few years ago. One could make the argument that we are “broke” because of all the BS artists on Wall Street. It’s the collapse of the RE/credit/stock market bubbles that have put the pension plans in such a precarious position.
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) earned an estimated 19.1 percent return on investments for the 12 months that ended June 30, 2007 – the highest gain in nearly a decade — to total $247.7 billion.
“This is good news for our members because these gains will carry many CalPERS plans to 100 percent full funding of our retirement obligations as of June 30, 2007,” said Rob Feckner, President of the CalPERS Board of Administration. “Since investment gains account for 75 cents of every dollar we pay in benefits, these returns represent money saved for employers and taxpayers.”
Not trying to beat a dead horse to death here. While I am an ardent supporter of unions, both public and private; there is plenty of room for improvement. I agree that the retirement plans tend to be too generous, but not because public employees don’t “deserve” them, but rather because we can’t afford them as taxpayers.
I imagine we will see a restructuring of our retirement plans, irrespective of what the unions want. Mind you, lifetime health benefits are pretty much done and gone anyway. Instead of the “3% at 50” plans that many departments have (3% of your top pay in the most recent years, multiplied by the number of years worked, qualifying for retirement at age 50 — this is where people get the 90% figure if someone works for 30 years), I would probably change it to “2% at 55” so the employee could retire at 55 yrs. of age, and get 2% of his/her highest salary multiplied by number of years worked. That would mean they get 60% at 55 yrs. instead of 90% at 50 years.
Mind you, there are not enough “desk jobs” for all of these people as they age, so for those who say they should work until 60 or 65, you’d have to hire one young guy for every old guy there (to fill the void left by the old guy when he moved to desk work). In the meantime, you’d still be paying the old guy his full salary + benefits + admin costs. It’s actually cheaper to let them retire sooner. Unlike other industries, there is a definite “working lifespan” for these people, and most of them are really broken physically, mentally, and emotionally by the time they retire, due to the strenuous/stressful nature of the jobs.
