Posted on 06/07/2011 6:24:03 AM PDT by reaganaut1
After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I “worked.” But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites. Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and—when it rains, it pours—another for unused sick leave. I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course, double the pay for adjuncts, which works out to over $200 an hour. Another going-away present was summer pay, one ninth of my salary, with no teaching obligation.
I haven’t done the math but I suspect that, given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech.
Why do I put “worked” in quotation marks? Because my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation: reading and writing about topics that interested me. Maybe this counts as work. But here I am today—like many of my retired colleagues—doing pretty much what I have done since the day I began graduate school, albeit with less intensity.
Before retiring, I carried a teaching load of two courses per semester: six hours of lecture a week. I usually scheduled classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays: The rest of the week was mine. Colleagues who pursued grants taught less, some rarely seeing a classroom. The gaps this left in the department’s course offerings were filled by adjuncts
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Colleges and Universities have helped destroy the concept of value by establishing the notion that all “knowledge” has some value, and, indeed, in many cases the more obscure and esoteric the knowledge is, the more it is celebrated and promoted.
Send less money to government; much less. We need torches and pitchforks in the streets. We need anger and action. we need our country back.
And yes we do need a handful of sociology professors. But just a handful.
And they should make no more than the building maintenance people.
I think they are high because if they were cheap, no one would pay to go to the University...and the University knows it. A private business could do it cheaper, but the accreditation rules would make it tough for students to get credit for the class.
Is a man evil for making good decisions about his future? I get retirement pay too - from the military. I consider it deferred pay, and it was a huge part in my staying in for more than 10 years. It isn’t a freebie given to me by kind people. I did the work in advance, and now collect my remaining wages.
If someone had offered me the deal this guy had, I might have taken it. No one was forced to offer it to him. They could have hired professors for less, but chose to pay outrageous salaries and benefits - all approved by the politicians.
A number of my old college profs admitted they had it very nice. But they taught at a smaller state college, UW-La Crosse (Wis) that meant most of them taught their classes personally without having grad student substitutes do much teaching. And they didn’t make as much money as profs who taught at private or bigger colleges. Nevertheless, they said they had it good. Not nearly as good as Rubenstein, who taught at one the nation’s elite colleges, but pretty good.
I don’t recall labeling him as evil.
He’s a hypocrite. He’s gotten his and is set for life, and now wants to be magnanimous and noble about criticizing the deep pathologies of the comically easy academic life.
“Call a man living luxuriously on the broken backs of others in chains what he is!”
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I believe you have already accomplished this, quite eloquently, in this thread.
Kudos.
I believe it is subsidies.
I think it is time to end all these quasiregulatory bodies like accreditating commitees, the epa and all others.
Good work if you can get it.
OK. Guess I misunderstood. Sorry.
Miscommunications are part of the lay of the land, when we are simply typing at each other, instead of face to face.
I will say that I put your military service on a MUCH higher plane than the pampered, non-demanding existence of a college professor, particularly a useless, sociology parasite.
Miscommunications are part of the lay of the land, when we are simply typing at each other, instead of face to face.
I will say that I put your military service on a MUCH higher plane than the pampered, non-demanding existence of a college professor, particularly a useless, sociology parasite.
As asked, this is a question overly presumptive. What was "good" about his decision way back then? The question presumes it was good. And what does that decision way back then have to do with a decision now? Things that were good at one time are not necessarily a good later.I get retirement pay too - from the military.For example it is good that children live in the house of their parents, are fed and clothed and otherwise wholly cared for by their parents. That it is, it is good while the children are under 16 or so. At 42 it is good for a man to be paying his own way!
At this time, given the burden that the man places on the debt shackled young, and on the taxpayers who also fund his "Retirement"--a life of unaccountable luxury and riches taken from others who made no current agreement with him.
Take your money at the time. Deferred payments for current work or goods are a form of theft from the future. Illegal, not usually. But when the future burdens others who were not part of the original arrangement--who had no say in it--it is immoral.
You aren't being paid by the military, you are being paid by me and my children, and my neighbors and my neighbors children. Do you send us thank you letters with each paycheck you receive?I consider it deferred pay, and it was a huge part in my staying in for more than 10 years.We didn't hire you now, we can't fire you now, we can't even demand any current performance for work from you. To us, friend, you are now no more than a leech.
Moreover the Constitution itself should protect us from such pensioner leechism. In that precious document enacted only via generations of mighty struggle and sacrifices far greater than yours the Army and Navy are only funded a two-years at a time.
How is it any promise was made to you that is longer than two years? We allow for pensions to widows of husbands lost in a war, or to lose men seriously harmed by warfare, but to others? A man able to post here is able enough to earn his own way, and needs no charity of pension to survive.
In other words you took the promise offered by politicians, who happily would enslave YOUR own grandchildren in debt to pay for it in order to keep you in a job for ten years-- TEN YEARS--that you wouldn't have taken otherwise.You were willing to be unhappy, to support such loathsome political promises, to keep a needed job from improving (because if you had not been willing to fill the slot for intrinsically dishonest promises about the future they would have improved the job conditions), and to enslave the nest generation. How meritorious! Not!
Also see comment on "deferred pay" prior.
You mean to say, that we need snipers, but coached it in less harsh terms. Semantically it's the same.
And I agree.
No I didn't say that.
We do need conservatives to get off their/our a$$es. We should have 10 candidates for every single elected office from dog catcher up to President for starters.
We should be at every school board meeting, every city council meeting, etc...
The left does it. It's hard for us to do because we all have jobs or other productive endeavors.
We also need to get better grounded in our history. Some of us do very well on that; but others like me need to educate ourselves better.
We also need to be smarter in how we do things. The O’Keefe and Giles team (of the ACORN sting) was just brilliant. They are a great model of what can be accomplished just exposing who the left really is.
Younger people should ALL be conservatives. We have done a dismal job of communicating conservative values if younger people vote for systems that will enslave them. Conservatism is about thinking for yourself and self determination. Liberalism is about a system of heavy handed government control over the lives of individuals. Why is that such a problem to communicate to younger voters?
“You aren’t being paid by the military, you are being paid by me and my children, and my neighbors and my neighbors children. Do you send us thank you letters with each paycheck you receive?
We didn’t hire you now, we can’t fire you now, we can’t even demand any current performance for work from you. To us, friend, you are now no more than a leech.”
You are not very bright, are you?
I am paid by the DOD. Yes, it is deferred payment. I delivered goods (service) on promise of future payments. It is no different than selling a car on an installment plan - the customer (taxpayer, citizen) takes the car (military service) and promises to make future payments.
No, I don’t send you letters thanking you for my retirement pay, nor did I thank you while on active duty. We had a business agreement. I did X, and in return you agreed to pay me Y now, and Z later. I kept my end of the deal, now I expect you to keep yours. If you do not, you are dishonest and a cheat and a thief.
“We allow for pensions to widows of husbands lost in a war, or to lose men seriously harmed by warfare, but to others? A man able to post here is able enough to earn his own way, and needs no charity of pension to survive.”
Again, we had an agreement. I kept my part, now I expect you to keep yours without bitching. If you had preferred, I’d have been willing to take a lump sum in advance - but you chose to buy my service on the installment plan. I accepted, and I delivered on my part - and now you want to weasel out of the contract.
You are not giving me charity. You are not ‘giving’ me squat. The payments are what you owe me. I kept my end of the bargain, but now you want to call it off.
I don’t care if your family pays me for 30 years. You agreed to do so before I accepted the contract. What part of a promise or a legal contract do you not understand?
I suppose you are one of those who buys a house, then refuses to pay - or to move out. You just want an excuse to keep back the money you promised to pay. Screw you!
We care. And we do not like it. WE never agreed to it.
And I would have fired your arrogant whining no-account butt too!
“We care. And we do not like it. WE never agreed to it.”
Bullshit! You have a representative government. Have you been out campaigning to end the military retirement system? If a bill was offered in Congress now to terminate all military retirement, who would vote for it? Anyone?
YOU never sent me into combat. I went there because the government that represents you told me to go.
When I was shot at, where were you? When I was in Turkey or Saudi, patrolling the skies over Iraq and getting shot at, where were you? When I was in Afghanistan, where were you?
You want the protection the military gives, and you want the benefit of having a military, but now you want to back out and claim you never hired us.
You are a liar and a cheat and a coward. You disgust me. I wish there was some way your personal taxes could double as punishment for your loathsomeness. Maybe your soft little butt should be hauled to Afghanistan, where my son is currently on the ground. You want to be safe from terrorists? You do it.
Oh wait, you don’t do it and you haven’t done it. You send others to do it in your place, and then try to change the terms you agreed to pay, you pathetic POS!
Politically connected thugs and liars do not represent me, any more than the local mafia Don and his represents the neighborhood, the Italians in the neighborhood, or the Sicilians in the neighborhood.
YOU are taking my money! YOU are NOT doing any work on my behalf. You are not serving anyone except yourself now. And you hide behind the same kind of embeggar-the-future policies of thugs, thieves and liars used to justify union pension bailouts, school district pension bailouts, and your own life of Reilly on my dime.
When you DID work YOU GOT PAID THEN! You cashed those paychecks and you had the same opportunities everyone else has to invest part of that for your future.
A lot of the work I DID goes to providing you and you family the goods and the energy you used your whole life. And some of those jobs where dangerous too. Men got injured, men died on those jobs. I ain’t asking YOU for one thin dime. I ain’t FORCING YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN to make my retirement quite nice and lush and luxuriant, and then arresting you and your children for failure to pay up.
I had good long term benefits—in the form of stock—too. Stock in real companies is a more HONEST way of funding retirement. But some of that is gone. The companies went bankrupt. Companies that provided vital goods and services too.
THIS COUNTRY IS BANKRUPT. You made an agreement about the future. The future is uncertain.
But rather than being part of a viable future, you only look out for yourself.
YOU, with that attitude of entitlement, disgust us.
“When you DID work YOU GOT PAID THEN!”
No, I received partial payment.
And now I am receiving payment made after the fact. I did the work I contracted to do, and now you want to avoid the payment you promised to make.
Oh, but wait!
“Politically connected thugs and liars do not represent me, any more than the local mafia Don and his represents the neighborhood, the Italians in the neighborhood, or the Sicilians in the neighborhood.”
Sorry, dude, but this is a republic. You don’t suffer under tyranny. We have elections. They install democratically elected representatives to make decisions.
No one made you dictator for life to make national decisions about when we go to war, or who leaves these shores and goes to others to fight.
I was hired to do a job, with some payment concurrent and other payment deferred. I was hired on the installment plan. You didn’t complain about my service while I was giving it, but now you want to withhold payment.
Kipling wrote a poem about your type:
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.
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