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.
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.
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.