Posted on 05/02/2012 5:07:10 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Retired College Teacher With $152,000 Pension Claims Pension Reform is Theft
April 27, 2012 By Bill Zettler
Michael Corn, a retired college teacher, recently wrote a letter-to-the-editor at the Daily Herald equating the unfunded Illinois pension system with theft. And I agree it is theft but I would argue the thief is the public employee not the legislature or taxpayer as Mr. Horn claims.
Mr. Corn laments that he paid 8% for his pension and for that unholy contribution he feels he has earned his $12,707.59 monthly pension or $152,490.84 per year. Mr. Corn paid his 8% for all of 31 years too. Wow that’s impressive. The rest of us have to work 40 or 45 year careers in order to get our pension (Social Security) at age 62 or 67 respectively. But then again teachers are special.
Now the greedy private sector taxpayers, the weirdo 95% of citizens without state pensions, who are responsible for paying for Mr. Corn’s $152,490.84 annual pension, contribute 6.2% to their own pension (called Social Security) and at age 62 after 40 years of contributions can take down a huge maximum pension of $22,260 annually or about one-seventh of Mr. Corn’s annual pension. So Mr. Corn contributes at a rate 22% higher but for 9 fewer years but receives 7 times the pension. And Mr. Corn retired earlier too at age 59. What a terrible deal for Mr. Corn. No wonder he is complaining.
(Excerpt) Read more at championnews.net ...
By this same logic, liberalism is theft.
college teachers who can’t add
“...as Mr. Horn claims. Mr. Corn laments...”
Is it Horn or Corn? I must need more coffee or something.
Stop blaming the teacher and start blaming the system.The guy went into the profession knowing what the future outcome would be as far as present pension payments would be . Why is he getting hammered for making a career decision that was a hell of a lot better than 90% of the people in the state. He planed his retirement on that future payout and should be entitled to every penny of it.Arguments that are negative about public pension payouts are the same as the 99% wackos complaining about banks and corporation profits.In life you make decisions. It seems that this guys decision on career was better than the complainers.
Bill, please tell me you have not worked that long and are only planning on Social Security for you retirement income.
Mr. Corn (or possibly Horn) is quite correct. He entered into a good faith contract which is now being backed out of. He is entirely logical to consider this theft.
However.
He presumably supported a decades-old scam under which politicians were elected to office essentially by pandering to the teachers’ and other unions, then paid for their election by agreeing to unsustainable pension plans and other benefits.
Pension plans were always a popular payoff because they could be kicked down the road a decade or two. The pols would be out of office by then, so they wouldn’t have to take the heat when their promises turned out to be impossible to meet.
In the final analysis, it’s the fault of We the People. The vast majority of us, including myself, were unwilling to get down in the mud to do the dirty work of ensuring fiscal sanity.
This is a classic example of regulatory capture. When a small group with intense interest in a particular issue is pitted against a far larger group with diffused (in reality no) interest in an issue, the small group will tend to get its own way 90% of the time.
Elections to school boards and municipal/state offices are of little interest to most people. Why should they be? So who gets elected tends to be those who pander most successfully to those who do care, public employees. These pols then wind up negotiating essentially with those who hired them as to how to spend someone else’s money.
The main issue is that when something is unsustainable, it will not be sustained.
Bingo! A stoggie for Renegade...the teach is just insisting on what was promised to him. If the idiot system is so screwed up that it makes commitments like this...pay up suckkas.
Thank you Renegade! I lamented awhile back about a group wanting to take my Hub’s pension away (he paid in about 9% over 30 years)here in Texas. My Hub’s pension isn’t ANYWHERE near Mr. Corn’s but he paid into it, the City of Houston entered into a contract with him and now the city is trying to crawfish on these retired employees. Needless to say, and much to my disappointment there were more on this forum that thought it was all right than those who did not. We’re in a minority on here Renegade.
You analyzed the situation correctly.
But since when do gubbermints keep their word?
Actually, he is largely correct. He had a contract with the state. The state agreed to pay X each year while he worked, and then Y each year after he left. No one forced the state to make that contract, and the people elected the politicians who approved it.
If the state wants to renegotiate based on inability to pay, let the state go bankrupt and renegotiate ALL of its debt.
Was it theft when OJ re-stole his trophies?
He’s perfectly fond of grandfather agreements, whereby teachers like me get screwed over, and have zero pensions, than taking a cut in his.
Who cares if the system collapses so long as he gets his? Thanks!
Actually, you have analyzed the situation right on the “money”.
This teacher, all the other teachers, all social security pensioners, all those who rely neither private pensions or social security but their own savings... will eventually get Nada, when the system collapses in chaos.
A reminder is in order that the operational debt as of yesterday was 101% of GDP.
And rising.
“(he paid in about 9% over 30 years)”
Are you happy with the current system whereby the young’uns get no pension whatsoever so that we can work and pay the other 91 percent of yours?
Where do you think the pension money is coming from?
"Austerity" is when the government has to say, "I know we made promises. I know you made life choices based on what we told you. I know you planned your retirement based on this stuff. But the money isn't there, and we cannot hold up our end of the bargain. Basically, you're screwed."
That conversation is going on across Europe now. In the US, the public service employee unions, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid -- all of these areas will find the Government saying, "I know what we promised you -- but you're screwed."
Big changes are coming, because there is no money.
The largest pension in Illinois currently for a college professor is near $425,000.. that my friend is theft!
I’m sure many of us HAD planned for our retirement, but between the losses since 2008, and the rumors of the Ear Leader and his cohorts wanting to “tap” retirement funds for their ever-growing hunger for revenue. . . I’m not sure many of us TRUST that plan any more. . .
Going forward though, new hires need to be given much more believable benefits.
If this thieving commmunist indoctrinator thinks this is bad, just wait till his socialist utopia goes broke.
Our retirement income got wiped out by medical debt years ago. Took us a decade to get out of that hole. Still don’t have nearly enough to even consider retirement. I’ll be working until the day I die.
Big changes are coming, because there is no money.
In fact the whole Big-Academia "college education" thing is a pathetic farce.
There isn't any money to pay them. That's the problem. How are public employees who get pension cuts any different from bond holders of a company that fails?
The comparison to how much Social Security would pay is a weak on because everyone knows that SS is a bad "investment" which is really just an income transfer scheme. Even if counted as an investment, the rate of return on a person who pays and therefore collects the maximum amount skews the results because SS participants at the top end are screwed by the disproportionality of SS payments. A person who earns and pays 50% of the cap gets 75% of the maximum benefits received by someone who earned and pay at the cap for an entire career.
Well the future is here. What he though he knew didn't pan out.
Looks like a damn good reason to default on the pensions, fire all the "educators", close the books on public "education" and lease all the buildings out to private citizens who want to own and operate the education industry.
"Special-ed", "Gifted Children", and other various parochial and specialized-study schools could all crop up to either succeed or fail on their own merit.
Obviously the thieving teacher's unions would not be involved.
Regardless, Mr. Corn can only be paid what he was promised in highly inflated dollars. That is mathematical certainty.
Well, if they are planning to close the institution and liquidate the all the assets to pay the pensioners, they wouldn't be much different.
Is that what's going to happen?
You guys better pass a law forcing the taxpeasants to STAY in Illinois, and pay this guy's retirement.
I can just about guarantee you that the only ones left in Illinois after a few years will be idiots too dumb to figure out that they're galley slaves for the public sector retirees.
The exodus, and the shrieks following the taxrefugees, will be entertaining, to say the least.
There's considerable evidence that the exodus has already started - my figures show that even though Illinois monthly personal income tax revenues are WAY up, Illinois monthly personal income totals are WAY down.
Guess What, Professor Corn...
We have met the 1%...and he is YOU!
They did not close or liquidate GM to payout. But the bond holders got killed.
What's good enough for GM bondholders is good enough for public employees
The cliche about “too good to be true” springs to mind.
The process is essentially a con game. The taxpayers lose and the retirees lose (those who don’t die before the system collapses).
The only winners are those who gamed the system for their power, the union leaders and the politicians they corrupt. They aren’t held responsible. (Not that they could be, since the amounts of money involved couldn’t be repossessed from them anyway.)
You are right that he just is working in the system as it existed- but I worked for some of these government agencies-there are nearly daily discussions on how they can flim-flam the system for their own gain.
And they know it, and then they feel like they deserve it.
When I told them I thought it was immoral if not illegal you would think I pissed in the morning coffee. and they went out of their way to get revenge on me and get me out of there.
These people ARE FILTHY WHORES
Dumb op-ed. While $152K is awfully high, the whole 40-45 years thing is a canard. College professors generally have a PhD requiring 8-10 years of post high school study. Most don’t get the position much before the age of 32. The youngest where I’ve worked for 32 years was 28 when hired.
Most were in the 33-40 years of age range before being hired for a tenure track position with benefits.
My University requires me to pay into my pension plan (private) and they match a portion of what I pay. When I retire, the whole thing is mine, to spend as I please.
If the state government stepped in and took that away, I would consider armed revolution as a good option.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!!!
This can only continue until the systems collapses, and we are seeing it start to collapse. I am beginning to think you can not manage a collapse, you just have to go for it.
"They" broke the law...and violated hundreds of years of corporate protocol. Blatant tyranny.
Stay tuned. You ain't seen nuthin yet.
? Well, I wouldn't exactly call crashing the world economy, destroying the lending industry, the housing industry, the energy sector, millions of personal life savings accounts and jobs "nuthin". Not to mention confiscating your yet-unborn great grandchildren's incomes.
???
Public employee contract negotiations look more like collusion to me.
The employees, with rare exceptions, do not negotiate their own contracts. They are required to be members of a union, which negotiates for them. They are as trapped in the system as anyone else.
They have, up to now, benefited. But the gravy train is running out of gravy.
Whatever, there were blacks fighting on the Confederate side too.
I think there is a belief out there that things got bad but that we avoided disaster. Americans have not experienced the collapse of Social Security and Great Society programs. But they will. We have not yet had millions of people get stiffed on money they were counting on to put food in their mouths. Pols are still cooking the books and finding short term cash to cover this and that. It can't continue.
Greek style.
Mr. Corn laments that he paid 8% for his pension and for that unholy contribution he feels he has earned.
In California teachers don’t pay into social security and I think twenty other states have the same rule.
Fair share anyone?.
we need good men or women of character to start taking over even the smallest political positions.....
that does not compare to the 90% who work hard and have to face the consequences and possibly get fired for not keeping up...
so the jokes on us I guess....
just because NOT EVERYBODY can get the cushy govt job doesn't mean the cushy govt workers deserve better treatment...
my husband was also "promised" lots of stuff when he worked for a major company....yet, it was all too easy for bankruptcy to be approved and his retirement medical benefits GONE and his pension cut into thirds.....
one sees evil and insanity one calls it out, no matter who "chose" what...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.