American hero thrashed...

[exploited]

It isn't the unions problem. They contribute their agreed upon portion. So does the employer. The people who are responsible are politicians that we elect, who unsurprisingly want to punish public sector employees for their own failures.

[gla22]

His pension is terrible for a multitude of reasons:

#1: He is retiring at 46 near his age of peak productivity. For most jobs the golden age of productivity is 40-55. This is where you have a lot of experience, leadership capabilities and accumulated knowledge and are the most value to society. Why as a society should we incentivize people to quit working at this point in their lives?

#2: We as a society can't afford to pay people literally $4-5 million dollars in cash and benefits for doing nothing. This is why the U.S. and many states and cities are in so much debt. This is why you pay 30% of your money in taxes and get so little value for it. It is being wasted on these leeches, the MIC and interest payments.

We are lucky the U.S. is so wealthy. We are so wealthy that the negative effects of the political dysfunction, the cronyism, the bad policy, the corruption are smoothed over by the pure quantity of money but...

The U.S. can't run trillion dollar deficits for ever

And the end result is what the PIIGS are going through, economic crisis.

[The Dharma Bum]

well said

[Ben Huh]

[exploited]

[Ben Huh]

Envious of what? I have a great job, own my car and will very soon own a house. I also have a private sector job and have insurance, but have had to pay most of my retirement on my own. In order to get my company to put in anything other than modest contributions I have to put in my 20 years. Even then my company would put in about 50% of retirement and I would be responsible solely for the other half. My retirement is what I make of it. I put in to it so that I'll have it when I am done working. There is nothing to be envious of. These people feel entitled to get millions (over the course of several decades) to not work. They put 20 good years of work in an 80 year life and because of that they want to be paid 50k or more a year in retirement for 30-40 years? Nope. Not sustainable. You an legalize anything you want, but we have passed the point where enough people have realized how much of a gravy train these pensions are. Stick your head in the sand all you want. Public spending needs to be cut across the board and these pensions need to be amongst those cuts.

[eynon81]

[exploited]

[The Comrade]

[Ben Huh]

I want to clarify too that I am not against pensions, people who get pension, etc. If these people were promised by the state/fed and their employers these pensions, then they should reasonably expect to get those pensions. The obvious problem is, who is paying, or much rather not paying these pensions, and going into trillion dollar debts over it? Our nation is broke. We fight wars we can't sustain, fight drugs we can never remove from the public, promise public employees six figure pensions. That is where my problem lies on this topic. Not hard-working people who want what they were promised. The government has blank checked everything when it comes to social security, retirements and pensions for public employees and retirees. The only way to fix it IMO is by everyone giving up something. The rich, poor, old, young or whatever.