By: Diane Benjamin
The below proves yet again why you should vote NO to the Democrats Constitutional Amendment for a progressive income tax. Pensions Pensions Pensions!
Below are the top 31 pensions being collected in Illinois. Keep in mind, these people aren’t working for a dime they are currently receive. An organization called Taxpayers United of America put the list together.
SURS is the retirement fund for the State Universities Retirement System. It is easy to see why Illinois colleges aren’t affordable! The SURS funding percent is in the low 40’s and heading the wrong direction: PDF page 15 http://www.surs.com/sites/default/files/pdfsx/avr19.pdf
TRS is the Teacher’s Retirement System. TRS funding is even worse, slightly over 40%. PDF page 3 https://www.trsil.org/sites/default/files/documents/fy19_2.pdf
Instead of sustainable reforms to Illinois pensions, Democrats want to raise your taxes before the plans go bankrupt.
I’m sure every person below will say they earned this benefit. This is why people will continue to move to tax friendly states. Nobody asked us is we wanted to pay the bills. Pensions aren’t taxable in Illinois, these people will vote YES on the Amendment so their free state income will continue.
Obscene
Illinois the land of 2 classes and proof being a liberal democrat is a lot more dangerous than the Corono (sp) virus. Why aren’t distributions capped? The only hope for Illinois unfortunately is a corona virus type event that is retirement plan selective.
Teachers like to claim they are underpaid. Maybe they are. But you have to look at total compensation especially when they can retire at 55. We need to eliminate all government pensions and switch to defined contribution plans similar to the private sector.
What’s the education level of these people? If they’re university professors they more than likely have PhD’s. Most teachers have master’s degree in at least one subject plus more schooling to retain their accreditation. So that’s a considerable amount of time dedicated to an advanced education. The other factor is the seniority or years of service. Again, most are working well into their 60 and even 70’s not in their 50’s.
How much would those people make if they worked in the private sector with that level of education and experience? Probably much more. I guess educating your ungrateful children is totally a waste of time, you rather they remain ignorant. Why would anyone want to teach if this is the attitude that’s thrown in their face? Teaching is a hard profession with little to no thank you. If you actually talked to any teacher, the amount of time, money and effort they put into their profession, it’s a labor of love.
These are payments for NOT working, they contribute very little to get this much. No they couldn’t make this much in the private sector, companies can’t tax.
“These are payments for NOT working, they contribute very little to get this much. No they couldn’t make this much in the private sector, companies can’t tax.”
Payments for not working? Isn’t that the general idea of retirement? That at the age of 60 something (not 50) you should be able to NOT to work? According to you these teachers should die in the classroom?
“No, they couldn’t make this much in the private sector, companies can’t tax (sic)?”
You certainly haven’t given any examples to support either of your contentions. Jamie Dimon for example has a MBA. His net worth is 1.4 BILLION. Or how much could an average person make with a generic MBA: “A college graduate with MBA degree can expect a median entry level salary of $100,000. Some have scored as much as $680,000 depending on the student and the hiring company. Students who graduate from one of the top ten business schools will see a higher median pay of $140K. After ten years of solid work, many MBA graduates can see their pay rise into the $200,000 to $500,000 range or even higher.”
So your statement and Megahost statement are fiction. Those teachers with “worthless” PhD’s are still teaching your children.
As to the “worthless” PhD, in the private sector, they make just as much as those with Master degrees. And yes, they do have private sector jobs. So your statement and Megahost statement are fiction. Those teachers with “worthless” PhD’s are still teaching your children.
https://moneynation.com/mba-salary/
https://www.wes.org/advisor-blog/salary-difference-masters-phd/
Obviously you don’t work in the private sector. Here is a clue….if you have a PHD in some of the areas these people have and work in the private sector you wouldn’t have a job. For the main part we are stuck sponsoring people with worthless degrees with our taxpayer money. Made even worse when they are not doing a damn thing at 56 and getting money after teaching classes to provide more people with worthless degrees.
Clarence Bowman, is that the Al Bowman, former President at ISU and then appointed by Rauner for some political job. Hell of a nice guy, but this is like theft.
That would be him!
I don’t know if it was here in BLNNews, but I saw a similar article posted to FB complaining abou tthe number of people that had $1M anticipated lifetime payouts. That is not necessarily an accurate indicator of pension abuse. The above chart, especially the ‘Employee Contribution %’ is Great information.
Some good FYIs, though… Assuming a full 40-year career, somewhere around 40% actually means their retirement was self funded. ($1K put away the first year you work can compound out to $32K or more at retirement.) As such, something as low as 20 or even 10% *Might* be reasonable. As you get into lower percentages or shorter careers, something is wrong. But the average above is 8.5%, with a median of 7%.
This is also wonderful in that it leads us to an equitable way to approach pension reform. Anti-reformers like to trot out the idea of robbing a dedicated teacher who worked for decades of the comfortable pension she fully earned. Anyone like that would have a decent contribution percentage. A good ‘just cut the abusers’ approach would be something like “For any pension having less than a 10% contribution rate, eliminate all built-in increases, or reduce by 1% per year for those not having built-in increases, until the actuarial contribution rate is 10% or greater.” I’m sure there could be better or more nuanced calculations, but that’s a great starting point!
This is a thoughtful comment. I appreciate it.