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As a nonunion teacher who is a FREEPer while on break (like now) let me say that we are not all in the same boat as NJ. In Missouri I have over 10% of my salary deducted (matched by the district as part of my salary) for retirement. There is talk of the teacher withhold going up to as much as 14% to keep the system on the sound finical footing it now enjoys. MO teacher retirement is private, not government run, meaning it is much better than state worker retirement or social security. Much effort has been spent over the years to keep the government out of our retirement system. I enjoy poking my liberal colleges with the fact that while they want the government to run health care they know better than to let the same government take over our retirement.

Fellow freepers before engaging in blanket attacks on teachers and public schools please remember this. If I lived in New Jersey, or St Louis for that matter, there would be a good chance that I'd be homeschooling. Here in God's blessed Ozarks the schools are full of politically Conservative Christian teachers who like me feel called to serve in public schools. Like everyone else I'd like to make more money, but what I really got into education to make was a difference.

WHEN will you TEACHERS...ESPECIALLY FREEPERS

Get it thru your heads whenever education is mentioned, 99.9% of the time the problem is the TEACHERS UNIONS and ANNOUNCE it as such .... AS I DID!!!!

YOU think you have PROBLEMS?? I’m a Conservative, A FREEPER, and a UNION ACTOR!!! you want to talk about broad brush attacks????

That’s great to know and certainly encouraging. I think many of us are probably responding to the article and to our own experience. I know I was. I live in MA and it is a tad frustrating with high taxes, “user fees” for sports (I just doled out $350.00 for my daughet to play lacrosse), and then to listen to these educaters trying to dump their liberal agenda upon my kids. It’s glad to know that that is not the case everywhere.

MO teacher retirement is private, not government run, meaning it is much better than state worker retirement or social security. Much effort has been spent over the years to keep the government out of our retirement system. I enjoy poking my liberal colleges with the fact that while they want the government to run health care they know better than to let the same government take over our retirement.

The example of MO needs to be trumpeted far and wide. Even the federal Thrift Savings Program is now a private retirement account based on employee contributions and matching. No more big "guaranteed" pensions.

If this is good enough even for the dumb federal government, shouldn't most retirement plans for government employees be private likewise, rather than continue to be huge taxpayer-funded entitlements?