According to a new Field poll, a plurality of Californians now feel that state worker pensions are too generous. With scandals like the Bell city employees' pay packages and a town like Vallejo filing for bankruptcy instead of paying the pensions of cops and firefighters, I understand how public resentment has grown. Closer to my situation, the pay packages for people at the district level of the Peralta Community Colleges, where a boatload of people are making between $100,000 to $300,000 a year each, are more than a little grating when workers who actually makes students' lives better are getting canned left and right, like teachers, librarians, facilities workers and janitors.
But here's a guy sucking at the public teat who would actually like to tell you that he is getting screwed at the pension level and there should be something done about it.
That guy is Matty Boy.
Hi, how are ya? Nice to see ya.
Now that I work for the state of California and I'm part of the state pension plan, this means I will get docked Social Security benefits. I understand the idea is "double dipping" and I will note that I don't get any Social Security deduction from my check at Laney.
The thing is, I worked for more than twenty years out in the private sector before becoming a sponge off the taxpayers, having the gall to think that the time I spend 'splainin' order of operations or the quadratic formula or the Central Limit Theorem to community college students is actual gainful employment. More than that, I'm a part-timer, so I have to work several jobs to keep a roof above my head, and some of those gigs are still in the private sector. That means Social Security is taken out of those checks and I will get less of it than the average Joe, even though the system is still expected to be solvent when I get to retirement age, whatever age that scummy old coot Alan Simpson thinks that is.
And much more than this, I am NOT a unique case.
The current system has a sliding scale, but it depends on how may years you were paid "substantial earnings", a number which has increased over time because of inflation. If somebody has had a state gig his or her entire life, then it makes sense that since that person paid nothing into Social Security, he or she should just get by on a state pension and whatever savings were accumulated. But folks like me who have become state workers late in life and still have to work part time at companies that are taking Social Security out of each paycheck will never see any benefit from that removed money if we do not work enough hours outside the public employee system.
To me, it's just another example of a tax system designed to make the rich richer and the non-rich poorer. They use "small business owners" as human shields, but the very rich are robbing us blind when there has been enough growth in this country's economy in the past forty years that the tide should have lifted all the boats, not just the yachts.
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