San Diego Pension Crisis - Coming Soon To A Town Near You!

Doing a little research this morning. I remembered the story of the first recipient of Social Security benefits. Google is a wonderful thing.

Ida May Fuller was the first social security recipient. She paid in a total of $24.75, retired in 1939, lived to be 100 years old in 1975, and in the process collected $22,888.92 in benefits. Ida May is an extreme example but it is true that for current and past retirees benefit increases, a growing economy and longer life expectancy made social security a real deal. It's today's workers and children for whom social security is a raw deal. Even if the system does not go bankrupt, current workers will receive a very poor return on their "investment."

“Even more outrageous, we have discovered 17 Illinois State Police employees retired at age 50 and now have lavish pensions greater than $100,000 per year. A fifty year-old state cop with a $100,000 pension, including a 3% automatic annual increase, will receive more than $5 million in pension payments over his 31 year life expectancy, despite contributing only about $200,000 in pension payments.”

These are just two examples of why pensions and government are killing this economy and not one thing is being done about it. The mere mention of pension reform brings howls from the people on the receiving end of these perks. Wish I had the knowledge at 18 that I could have gotten a job as a bus driver at 18. Retire at 50 with full health benefits for the rest of my life, then get another job. The second job? That would have to be another feed at the public trough though. It would be great to be a double dipper.

Jane Doe (she exists, name changed by Ravaged) is a city councilman in the city of Pomona in eastern LA County. She also worked for the Pomona Unified School District.

That gave her an interest in two pensions -- one for her school work, one for her work on the council. According to a report in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, in a deal to maximize the benefits of these pensions, she convinced her colleagues on the Pomona council to let her resign her seat on the council on the same day she retired from the school district. Then....

Then...

The council appointed her back to the council two days later.

The purpose of all this maneuvering: allowing her to maximize her pension and, according to the web site PublicCEO, boost her salary from the city of Pomona.

I am not screaming that I want to see an end to social security but lets be honest. Something has to change. The fact that the baby boomers are rapidly approaching retirement age is going to strain the system if not outright break it. Our kids will be the ones paying the bills that we are currently running up in the tens of trillions. I do have a couple of ideas from where to start. Means testing for one. May sound mean. Hey life is unfair.

A second suggestion would be to include all income into the tax on social sercuity. As of 2007 once an individual had earned over $92,500 Social Security tax ended. Why not tax the whole salary. This means that a guy like Alex Rodriguez who makes $25 million a year stops paying his FICA taxes after the first $92,500. Means testing seems to be a good plan here too. Arod....sorry dude but there are way more people who need that $2100 a month than you. You'll have to suffer. Maybe you could go live with Madonna. She has lots of money and she wouldn't be getting a social security check either.

In Massachusetts the voters had a speaker of the house who is also the brother of a notorious gangster. Can you imagine that ... one never knew the other's whereabouts. The holidays must have been miserable without the family ever really being together. Anyway....the speaker of the house of Massachusetts ends up retiring. Where's he go upon retirement? UMass. He retired from there too. Now he has to live on a paltry $200,000 a year pension. Damn...life sure is unfair.

Think about being a Massachusetts taxpayer. On average they pay less than $3000 a year in state income taxes. That means it takes close to 70 full time salaried employees in the private sector working and paying their taxes....just to pay this man's pension. There arent 70 employees at my company. So at least two companies have to be in business and the only thing they are paying their taxes to is this one man's lavish pension. Yep....life is unfair alright.