[DaveA37]

“You’ll have to pay more into your pension, an effective wage cut”....

Explain to me EXACTLY how putting money away for you retirement is considered a ‘pay cut”. It is nothing more than me putting away part of my income for a future time, all the while it should be earning interest. “Budget cuts”, “pay cuts”, “reduced spending” are all play on words.

The gubmint workers are earning (I say that loosly) far more than those who actually create/build products towards our GNP instead of shuffling papers. Stop the bitching and get back to work.

[tanknetter]

Explain to me EXACTLY how putting money away for you retirement is considered a ‘pay cut”. It is nothing more than me putting away part of my income for a future time, all the while it should be earning interest. “Budget cuts”, “pay cuts”, “reduced spending” are all play on words.

The issue is that it's compulsory. I can easily imagine the howls of outrage around here if part of the deal was to raise EVERYONE'S Social Security "contribution" by a percent or two. People would be screaming bloody murder about how it drops their net income, yelling about all the negative economic impacts of taking the ability to decide where to spend that money out of the hands of individuals and putting it into the hands of nameless/faceless bureaucrats.

Conservatives don't like being told what to do with the money they themselves earn. We need to be consistent and then apply that same standard to others as well.

[CPONuke]

Except in your example one might expect to have an increased rate of return if you put more money away. In this case, more will be put in but the same will come out on the back end.

[csmusaret]

They aren’t putting money away for their retirement and that is the crux of the whole problem. They are getting a defined benefit in retirement. They do not contribute to a 401K or similar pension program. If anyone was serious about cutting the cost of government new hires would all be on a defined contribution system. You can call these proposed cuts a paycut or a tax increase, but you cannot truthfully say they are an increase to retirement contributions.