“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.
I think even Aynn Rand made the point that those serving in the military were not subject to the same rules of employment as those employed elsewhere in business or for government. Their term of employment, once signed on to in an incremental fashion, did not allow them to break employment — they were not in a free market of employment “at will”.
For subjecting yourself to such service at risk to your personal safety and at the beck and call of the national interests and defense, you sacrifice a great deal of your ability to have a productive life after service to the degree that a short timer or a never-served has. For that, if you stick it out the required term, you get a “retirement” pay. It and the instance cited in this article have terms in common but not the same conditions and the two are vastly different, in my opinion.
In any case you obviously know me not.
The widespread military pensions in the US today are a new thing. "Retirement" is a new thing. In 1880 78% of men over 65 worked. In 1920: 60%. In 1950: 47%.
In 2000: 18%!
Too many retired! Now those retired folks who rely on their own savings and fortunes do not burden the rest of us.
But those who do not have their own savings, and rely on the public weal--the PROPER word for that is CHARITY.
Friend, you are living on charity.