Posted on 02/25/2011 9:30:19 PM PST by Outlaw Woman
Add another one to the list of Wisconsin myths: Over at Forbes.com, Rick Ungar has posted a piece that purports to show that Gov. Scott Walker is lying about how government-employee pensions are funded in Wisconsin. His thesis, drawing on this piece by David Cay Johnston, is that Wisconsin state employees participate in a deferred-compensation program, whereby they set aside their own money and the government matches it:
The pension plan is the direct result of deferred compensation — money that employees would have been paid as cash salary but choose, instead, to have placed in the state operated pension fund where the money can be professionally invested (at a lower cost of management) for the future.
His conclusion, therefore, is that 100 percent of the pension benefits currently received by state- and local-government employees is borne by the employees themselves:
If the Wisconsin governor and state legislature were to be honest, they would correctly frame this issue. They are not, in fact, asking state employees to make a larger contribution to their pension and benefits programs as that would not be possible — the employees are already paying 100% of the contributions.
What they are actually asking is that the employees take a pay cut.
Unfortunately, his “smoking gun” is ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I got them off my pay stub.
My point was that if you look at the vast sum of money the federal government puts away for a lower return, there is no way these state and local pension plans can be solvent. My pension expects a return of 34% of my pay when I reach mandatory retirement, when a teacher in Nevada will get paid 90% of their pay, and a 44 year old policeman in New York state will be getting more than his last year's salary because he spiked his pension. The federal system is questionable at best, but at least it doesn't pay you more to retire. These state systems are in the land of make believe.
It certainly does.
You would be surprised. Many of us have businesses on the side. Landscape, concrete, at home business, farming, you name it.
What you won’t get are quality NEW teachers. Most teachers quit after 5 years in the business anyway. Now with the word “teacher” being used as a pejorative I can’t see why any college student would want to teach.
I've heard similar arguments on FR over the years, typically from people who don't have a teacher in the family or are not teachers.
I went to college to be a teacher. Majored in English with a double minor in Education and Political Science. This was a deviation from what was expected at my parochial high school. All my aptitude tests indicated that I had a natural talent for Civil Engineering; not a surprise, as I came from a long line of engineers and had been building complex projects since I was a child.
For a brief time, I sat in the teacher's chair. My day started at 7:00 AM and didn't end until 6:00 PM. I taught 150 students every day, then graded 150 papers every evening. Essays and book reports would consume an entire weekend.
In between classes, I was creating lesson plans, quiz sheets, and entire exams from scratch. There were no established modules; everything was done from the raw text.
My students learned. Some of my skills-level students were able to move into mainstream classes. Ultimately, by the time I was ready to graduate, I realized I could earn a lot more money in the private sector, leave my job at my job if I chose, and have a life again if I didn't teach.
In my current position, I have increased revenue for my company by 300% over the last 6 years, and had a 30% increase over last year's growth so far this quarter (even in a down economy). Twice I have been contacted by previous employers asking me to come back to their companies because I am a proven producer and revenue machine. I've earned multiple awards for excellence, and been recognized 3 times as one of the best in my national organization.
The largest deal I ever negotiated was worth $30,000,000, by cobbling together an all-volunteer coalition of over 5,000 land owners, in less than 3 months, to collectively negotiate our mineral rights. My time in the front of a classroom and my ability to make complex, relatively foreign material understandable, was particularly helpful in expanding the coalition through neighborhood "education sessions." That "professional" degree in English allowed me to read and understand complex mineral rights lease language and fight for an 18 page monster of a lease that even oil and gas attorneys found astounding and praised as one of the most comprehensive they had ever seen.
The point of all this is not to tout my accomplishments, but to help others realize that not everyone who sits behind a teacher's desk is a drooling liberal or was somehow unable to make it in the private sector.
There are teachers in my school district who make less than $21,000 a year and some of the staff are making less than $16,000. As public employees, it was easy enough to find their salaries on-line.
In my area, the average salary is between $38,000 and $42,000 with a college degree for a new hire with no experience.
I will take exception to one other point, if I may. History is not a subject with little economic value. History is absolutely essential for our country to retain it's civic identity, to combat creeping socialism, and will be particularly helpful for sales representatives when they enter international markets. I must admit I was surprised to see a FReeper, of all people, suggest that history was not critical to our survival as a country.
I'm hoping it's simply a case of "posting fever," where what you meant to convey is not how I am interpreting it. If so, my apologies.
The other thing to remember about the Wisconsin pension system is that benefits are based on the average of the THREE highest years of pay. It doesn’t matter if you made $25k as a janitor for 25 years, then had three years as Senior Janatorial Executive, making $120k, your pension will be based on those three years at $120k.
That’s kind of an exaggeration, but it is very common for employees to get one or two years at the end of their careers where they make significantly more, combined with a year or two with heavy overtime to really boost the pensions.
While teacher salaries may be as low as you state where you live, in Wisconsin, teacher salaries are generally in the mid $30k range out of school and in the high $70s later in a career. There are many, many teachers making more than $70k.
In Milwaukee, the minimum salary under the current contract is $49k and the max is just over $75k. This is for a failing district with a very low graduation rate.
Here is a searchable database with salaries and fringe benefit numbers.
I am very familiar with this type of pension spiking. My studies of Colorado retirees show lots of abusive pension spiking practices. The practice was rampant for university administration offices where even lower paid employees had pension spiking raises in the HAS period.
They hang around for decades, failing classroom after classroom of students.
Get rid of tenure, and watch the schools change.
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