Quote:
Originally Posted by Dottore
Milt, can you really blame people for shopping around for jobs that have good pensions? It's nothing that ever occurred to me, but I know that this is something that animates a large number of people.
Where I live for example, judges get very large pensions, and I know lawyers who have sought out judgeships - even though they would make a heck of a lot more more money in private practice - because the big pension at the end of the road is a huge incentive.
One thing I do have a huge problem with is reducing someone's pension retroactively. People plan their retirement around their pensions. If they have a contractual entitlement, and if, for example, they stuck it out at a miserable job because of that entitlement, I think it's just plain wrong to try to feck with that after the fact.
You can always reduce pension entitlements for people that haven't earned them yet. Those people can decide whether or not they want to stay with the job given the reduced entitlements. But once someone's earned their entitlement, taking it away is essentially a breach of contract - and just plain wrong in my view. It's like someone reducing your salary retroactively, after you've already agreed a figure.
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Read my previous post again. I haven't proposed anything but re negotiating pensions for those who are making as much money now as they were when on the job. If it's fair to dock one's Social Security because of income, then I feel it's fair for the pensions, especially the 90% ones, to be reduced as current income goes up. If it takes municipal bankruptcy to do it, fine with me. That's how it's done in the corporate world. Anyone remember T. Boone Pickens?
Well, he was a butcher, so I won't advocate anything he did. The point is, entitlements or not rock solid if they are abused, shopped for or not. And by abuse, I cite the example above of the guy going back to work the next day as a "contract" employee. One of my out-in-laws did just that and it sucks.
In this case, I don't believe in getting the cake and eating it too.