If I'm understanding this right, it's basically teachers saying, "Fine. You don't want to pay us more now, so pay us more when we retire." Then school boards say, "Okay. We'll kick the can down the road." I guess I'm not understanding how this is the fault of the teachers or their unions.
I actually agree with you. Public pensions may also be a casualty of the low interest rates. It drove all investors into the stock market because you couldn't get a decent return anywhere else. Now with the market floundering, the chickens will come home to roost.
Why do you think the state of Illinois is losing population over the last decade?
Gold.
Roughly 10% of my paycheck goes to my pension. You really don't know wtf you are talking about here, do you.
And where does your paycheck funding come from? A pay fairy?
I am paid for a professional service that I provide to my community that my community wants to have. GFY if you think the investment I made in time and money on myself should be given away for free. Grow up.
The school boards elected by taxpayers agreed in negotiations to give educators a larger pension in the future instead of paying higher salaries at the time. Once again, how is the the teachers' or unions' fault?
If States are promising financial growth that they have no control over that also needs to stop. Agree to a match and fight/argue over that percentage but the growth should be whatever happens.
I’ve seen stories on them specifically before.
FYI: She can participate in a 403b, she should check with her employer about that. That said, since 9-10% (I think it's currently 9.5% but it has varried a few times) the amount I can put in the 403b isn't as much as I could otherwise. That said, I like having both sources (among a few others). I'm not a big "all my eggs in one basket" guy.
In Illinois, it is the highest paid 4 years out of the last 10.
Illinois obviously needs to massively reform the public pension system. At the same time, just taking it away from these employees that have stayed in the public sector and made long term financial decisions based on how the pension system was constructed is not fair either. You can't just pull the rug out from under these people.
Holy crap. I actually agree with Tom on something. IPERS is in great shape and the Iowa employees that have lived under the system and paid in all these years shouldn't be gettng screwed.
Yeah we have the benefit of her having 401k (converted to IRA) from her 10 years in corporate as well as my 401k that we pumped up when she went to teaching (realizing the pension fund was a mess) so we are more than OK for retirement, even if the pension went away, but most teachers in her position are not as fortunate.
If she's not paying the 6.2% to Social Security she should, at minimum, be putting that money towards her 403B. Keep in mind that there is an employer match that gets thrown towards SSI so that number is actually 12%. You'd have to run the numbers and come up with a % to pay into the 403B that would yield a comparable payout to SSI.
The Republicans have not been in charge of a damn thing in Illinois for decades. The Democrats own the shit show in Illinois.
The problem with the pension system in Illinois is that it is part of a large money laundering scheme. The DEM's make sure the public employees and their union get as much as possible, the unions and employees send a percentage back to the DEM's in the form of political contributions. The DEM's are never going to try and fix a system that is in their benefit. They will simply raise taxes on private sector employees.
Cops and firefighters do that all the time. Some in my own family.
Drink more Kool-Aid TONY!
if you want to be that dumb all of you money comes from the government because they printed it and police it.
Where did the money they put in go? What did it get spent on instead? How many times have these "tax ammendments" been done for the sake of saving the public sector pensions?
They actually have changed the system and those under Tier 2 have a different system for their pensions, one that does not pay nearly as much. As a consequence, the number of people going into teaching in Illinois has dropped dangerously low, much like what we are seeing in other states that have crappy pay. At this point, they may not let me retire because of a shortage of teachers, although I'm not sure how they can stop me. I just don't see how I will still be able to do this job in my mid 60's and beyond. Well, I don't see how I will be able to do this job well at that point, anyway.
The Dems controlled the House in Illinois EVERY year from 1992-today with the exception of 1995-1997.
Oh, are you referring to how the pension fund was raided by both Republican and Democratic governors for other reasons and never was repaid? Are you referring to how, as a consequence of that theft, the money in the pension fund did not grow at the rate it was supposed to so now there are even bigger deficits? So, can I take it you are in the "F**k the victims of the theft group, I got mine" category? Yeah, I'm well aware of what happened. But that's not ever getting fixed so we need to deal with the situation as it stands now and the only viable solution that doesn't involve telling public sector employees to get f****d is to get rid of the flat tax that is a big source of the problem in the first place. A variable tax rate would have allowed those past governors to have a tool to get enough money for the budget without having to steal from the pension fund.
