Posted on 08/19/2011 5:40:01 AM PDT by markomalley
It sounds like a pretty good deal: Retire at age 38 after 20 years of work and get a monthly pension of half your salary for the rest of your life. All you have to do is join the military.
As the nation tightens its budget belt, the century-old military retirement system has come under attack as unaffordable, unfair to some who serve and overly generous compared with civilian benefits.
That very notion, laid out in a Pentagon-ordered study, sent a wave of fear and anger through the ranks of current and retired military members when it was reported in the news media this month.
If pensions are to be cut, Congress should go first, one person said on the Internet.
"Obviously, we're concerned about it," said retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, an Army chief of staff in the 1990s who heads the nonprofit educational group Association of the United States Army.
The Defense Department put out a statement this week stressing that it was only a proposal and no changes will be made anytime soon.
"While the military retirement system, as with all other compensation, is a fair subject of review for effectiveness and efficiency, no changes to the current retirement system have been approved," Eileen Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said. "And no changes will be made without careful consideration for both the current force and the future force."
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
- When the government stops paying people to sit on their asses, then you can look at cutting military pensions
- When Congressweenies start getting pensions in accordance with civilian corporate practice, then you can look at cutting military pensions
- When civilian occupations have to deal with the same operating rules as military occupations, then you can look at cutting military pensions
In the meantime, shaddup...unless destroying the military is your objective.
Congressional and Presidential pensions are too generous.
As a retired AF officer, I fully expect the Government to shaft the military (current or retired) first. Those who actually contribute nothing to the country will be left untouched—or their benefits will increase. They will get food stamps, free health care, rent-free residency in foreclosed homes with free cable, Internet, and cell-phones to boot. Why? Its simple. Military are a declining demographic and we don’t riot.
Are these people trying to scare the military back on to the plantation or are they trying to unionize the troops?
One thing we know for sure, this has nothing to do with cost cutting measures.
Hey Pauline, go embed yourself with a military unit for a year’s deployment. Branch of service and mission? Take your pick. Wear their uniform and equipment. Endure their hardships and family seperation. Embrace their suck. Now, do it again a half adozen times over twenty years and add in re-assignment moves every 2-3 years. Then get back to me about how military retirement is bloated and needs to be cut back.
I would add when you stop giving welfare and social security to illegals, then you look at cutting military pensions or TRICARE PRIME.
And it’s not half salary, it’s half BASE PAY as you may know.
Well the brass sat on their collective @sses when zer0 came after the Dr. who had the nerve to question his phony qualifications to command the forces. Where have they been? Laying low thats where.
Now he wants a piece of them. Not very comfortable is it?
Excuse my French, but this guy is as fullashit as anyone I’ve ever stumbled across!
“Just join the military”??
I spent 17 out of 20 years on Active Duty “Haze Grey, and Underway”. President Reagan did not believe Nimitz class carriers were much good sitting next to a pier, so we stayed at sea flying airplanes, unless we were in the yards doing a “restricted availability”, which meant we spent three months rebuilding, replacing, maintaining and upgrading all four catapults, five arresting engines, all of the flight deck lighting and landing systems equipment.
I’m not bitching, but it pisses me off to no end when I hear some jackass like this author trying to minimize what it is that I and Millions of my fellow Shipmates accomplished when we “just joined the military”.
By the way, how many night traps does this dickweed have to his name?? I have well over 100,000.....
You forgot what Job guarantees you have a 50/50 chance of dying.
Something most folks do not know:
In 1984, the military was required to fund retirement up front. They set aside money for a trust fund adjusted annually to cover future retirements.
In 2010, that required them to pay 20 billion for future retirements. The government also pays 50 billion/year to those who served prior to 1984, although that figure should go down as those older retirees die off.
Spending 20 billion out of a 600+ billion budget to fund all future retirements is cheap! How anyone expects to reduce the deficit by cutting future retirement pay, when it already only costs $20 billion a year to cover retirement for everyone currently serving who will qualify...
Our deficit is $1,600 billion this year, and they want to reduce it by trimming the 20 billion set aside to fund future retirements?
If anyone is interested in seeing the actual .PDF presentation that spawned all this, please freep-mail me your regular email address.
AFSA (Air Force Sergeants Association) managed to get ahold of a copy and then distributed it out to all it’s members.
when these programs first got started a Sargent in the Air Force made about $250 a month - that is after four years of service. Times have changed but not much an E6 with 8 years in earns about 36k not as much as a starting tech support person in most companies. EArning 50% of 4,000 is not much of a deal for serving at the will of a strange system.
If you look at it from the supply and demand point of view I think you’d have to say they are about right now. They fill their recruiting quotas but just barely.
If they down size, if the economy keeps getting worse, if t they start turning away large numbers of people then you’d have to look at it again.
You’ve hit the nub. This isn’t about cutting spending. The people who propose this stuff love to spend. They aren’t budget cutters at heart. However, they hate the military and they see this as an opportunity to hurt the military. So, the paltry spending cuts are not the goal — weakening the nation is the goal.
And only the LEO and Fire depts are laying their lives and limbs on the line.
Nor are they enduring 6 months to 1 year of separation from their families at a moment's notice. Or multiple tours of duty in those ME hell holes
Any gov't that does NOT live under the same laws they foist on you, just became your LORD & MASTER, and you their SERF.
And when congress those Lord and Masters places themselves under the same laws that they foist on the serfs, Medicare. Then you can look at retiring the 30-40 year ranks, so the lower ranks can move up. Instead of gutting 3,000 Navy CPO's before they get their vested retirement in.
And I say DITTO to markomalley's post.
It’s a trap. If they entice republicans into cutting military spending they look bad to a big part of their base. If they refuse to cut they look bad to another big part of their base AND hypocrites to a big part of the voters at large.
And their wife's need to learn to wash fatigues in the bath tub, iron and starch them to regulation requirements with out the help of a maid.
I'd add in diapers, but we have progressed beyond those cloth ones, I had to wash in the bath tub, because money was to dang tight for the laundry mat.
One big salute and thank you to our Military and the wives that have their backs
Any congress critter who fails to keep faith with the Military, which is 1% of the population, will NOT keep faith with YOU the other 99%!
Next, you send your volunteers to every hell-hole in the world, away from their families - while our civilian citizens enjoy a lovely risk-free existence. In the process, many of those volunteers are killed, mutilated, and traumatized.
Meanwhile, we elect a series of nonveteran politicians with strong leftist leanings who spend us into a fiscal dumpster and then decide that it is perfectly fine to open up the services for perverts.
Now, they get the big idea to "equalize" pensions so nobody in their right mind will join the service and serve a full career.
When should we start learning Chinese?
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