JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum The US Bounced A Check

I'm a state employee and my wife is a federal employee. Allow me to offer a different perspective.

We make a good living, no doubt.

But it is about 1/2 of what we could make in the private sector. We know this because most of our friends went that route.

Am I complaining? Well, I wasn't.... Because we factored a number of things into our decision to work for governments - and a big one was the pension. Of course, it's nowhere near 80% but its good enough to live on. Essentially, we chose to defer compensation....

So we work hard for 25 years holding up our part of the bargain, and now they want to start messing around with our pensions.

You might call it necessary - I call it something else

My perspective is a little different - All this time, I thought the greedy folks were those who went for the big salaries and trusted Wall Street with their money. They sure weren't complaining when they were getting 10-15% rate of return. Now, though, their 401k's have tanked and suddenly folks like me didn't seem so stupid.

But maybe we were - because misery seems to love company so, hey, let's go after the pensions of those greedy government workers. We don't get a pension, why should they? Never mind that the private sector folks had more wealth accumulated than me - they just fell victim to greed or arrogance and now a lot of it is gone. Now they want mine to be gone too

And, in Florida anyway, there is a good chance they will get a good part of it.

Well, it's Saturday and I'd like to write more but I really have to get back to work.

Just Another Lazy Government Worker