By this same logic, liberalism is theft.
college teachers who can’t add
“...as Mr. Horn claims. Mr. Corn laments...”
Is it Horn or Corn? I must need more coffee or something.
Stop blaming the teacher and start blaming the system.The guy went into the profession knowing what the future outcome would be as far as present pension payments would be . Why is he getting hammered for making a career decision that was a hell of a lot better than 90% of the people in the state. He planed his retirement on that future payout and should be entitled to every penny of it.Arguments that are negative about public pension payouts are the same as the 99% wackos complaining about banks and corporation profits.In life you make decisions. It seems that this guys decision on career was better than the complainers.
Bill, please tell me you have not worked that long and are only planning on Social Security for you retirement income.
Mr. Corn (or possibly Horn) is quite correct. He entered into a good faith contract which is now being backed out of. He is entirely logical to consider this theft.
However.
He presumably supported a decades-old scam under which politicians were elected to office essentially by pandering to the teachers’ and other unions, then paid for their election by agreeing to unsustainable pension plans and other benefits.
Pension plans were always a popular payoff because they could be kicked down the road a decade or two. The pols would be out of office by then, so they wouldn’t have to take the heat when their promises turned out to be impossible to meet.
In the final analysis, it’s the fault of We the People. The vast majority of us, including myself, were unwilling to get down in the mud to do the dirty work of ensuring fiscal sanity.
This is a classic example of regulatory capture. When a small group with intense interest in a particular issue is pitted against a far larger group with diffused (in reality no) interest in an issue, the small group will tend to get its own way 90% of the time.
Elections to school boards and municipal/state offices are of little interest to most people. Why should they be? So who gets elected tends to be those who pander most successfully to those who do care, public employees. These pols then wind up negotiating essentially with those who hired them as to how to spend someone else’s money.
The main issue is that when something is unsustainable, it will not be sustained.
Actually, he is largely correct. He had a contract with the state. The state agreed to pay X each year while he worked, and then Y each year after he left. No one forced the state to make that contract, and the people elected the politicians who approved it.
If the state wants to renegotiate based on inability to pay, let the state go bankrupt and renegotiate ALL of its debt.
Was it theft when OJ re-stole his trophies?
Going forward though, new hires need to be given much more believable benefits.
If this thieving commmunist indoctrinator thinks this is bad, just wait till his socialist utopia goes broke.
The comparison to how much Social Security would pay is a weak on because everyone knows that SS is a bad "investment" which is really just an income transfer scheme. Even if counted as an investment, the rate of return on a person who pays and therefore collects the maximum amount skews the results because SS participants at the top end are screwed by the disproportionality of SS payments. A person who earns and pays 50% of the cap gets 75% of the maximum benefits received by someone who earned and pay at the cap for an entire career.
Regardless, Mr. Corn can only be paid what he was promised in highly inflated dollars. That is mathematical certainty.
Guess What, Professor Corn...
We have met the 1%...and he is YOU!
Dumb op-ed. While $152K is awfully high, the whole 40-45 years thing is a canard. College professors generally have a PhD requiring 8-10 years of post high school study. Most don’t get the position much before the age of 32. The youngest where I’ve worked for 32 years was 28 when hired.
Most were in the 33-40 years of age range before being hired for a tenure track position with benefits.
My University requires me to pay into my pension plan (private) and they match a portion of what I pay. When I retire, the whole thing is mine, to spend as I please.
If the state government stepped in and took that away, I would consider armed revolution as a good option.
Mr. Corn laments that he paid 8% for his pension and for that unholy contribution he feels he has earned.
In California teachers don’t pay into social security and I think twenty other states have the same rule.
Fair share anyone?.