I know a cop, retired at 50, with $75,000 per year, for life, with top shelf government medical benefits for him and wife.
This is like winning a tax paid lottery for life!
While private sector America is gang raped by government and it's employees.
This is like winning a tax paid lottery for life!
While private sector America is gang raped by government and it's employees.
Here is another example.
I live in New York State. NY state troopers can retire at half-pay after 20 years on the job. I know a few of them. Most started when they were early-mid 20s and so they'll be able to retire at 43-45 at half-pay. Most of them are making 130-140k by this time in their career because they start their careers at 71k, and are at 85k minimum after 5 years, assuming no promotions to ranks like sergeant ($100k) and lieutenant ($119k). That's for 40 hours, so overtime is obviously extra.
The average pay of someone in New York State's Police and Fire Retirement system was $116k last year. That includes 15 days (3 weeks) of vacation to start and 28 days (5.5 weeks) of vacation after 21 years on the job. They get 13 sick days a year that they can accumulate up to a maximum of 300 days. Once they retire, 165 of those days can be cashed in to pay for their health coverage in retirement, and they can cash in 20% of the remaining sick days. They get 12 paid holidays per year, a $100 bonus for staying fit, and 3-5 personal days per year. New York State pays for uniform dry cleaning and gives troopers 15 days of bereavement leave. Troopers kick in nothing toward their own retirement, so the state kicked in roughly 20% of state police pay last year, or around $120 million. Amazingly, the pension system is fully funded. I think that it's actually funded at about 103%, thanks to New York State being top 5 in the nation for property tax burden, income tax burden and sales tax burden.
Now you're probably assuming that these jobs are in high demand, and you'd be correct. Almost 16,000 people passed the last state police exam in 2008, and 88 troopers have been hired and trained since then. This indicates to me that the pay is too much, but the bigger issue isn't the pay, of course, it's the pension that is tied to that pay. So many state pension systems reward employees (particularly police and fire) that rack up a bunch of overtime in their last 3 years in the job, because it's typically the average salary of the last 3 years that is taken into account when figuring pension benefits.