What about solidarity? Instead of criticizing another worker’s situation as “insane”, we should be asking: why can’t we also have this kind of retirement package? They’ve successfully pitted worker vs worker.
I don’t think that retired fire chief’s (or school teachers') retirement is what’s wrong: what’s wrong is that most of us will not have a retirement that good. Why is that? It is possible to answer that question without tearing down someone else’s situation.
It comes from crab bucket mentality and a pervasive fear that somebody somewhere might be getting something they don't "deserve".
Everyone who gives a company years of their life should be able to comfortably retire after decades of service, but companies have managed to convince workers that most of them should work until the day they die and only a small precious few deserve to retire and finally be allowed to spend time with their loved ones.
How does that work? That guy, pensioner, who has it slightly better than you, is a different way of saying that:
1) that guy gets your labor, for decades. 4 decades to be exact
2) for less than you'll get for that work
(that's what getting a higher pension actually means in the real world, with money being an abstraction and all that)
3) he (or she) doesn't get more because they worked harder or better, but because they were working when a random political vote needed to be made (paid for, really). And that, not only won't repeat, but there's absolutely nothing you can do to change the situation to your benefit, even just to equalize. That last part is of course what makes taking away their benefits attractive.
Sounds pretty unfair to me. At least with a CEO they did something to get what they got, and there is a way to get their position, even if most will never achieve that.
It's absolutely unfair. But the solution is to raise the rest of us up, not tear these people down. Why don't I have a retirement like that? Why don't you have a retirement like that? Those are the questions we should be asking. Not "He shouldn't make that much!" The people who earn literally 100X that pensioner are laughing at us as we fight each other
How would that work? Could you explain? Because the only way to do that is to lower the price of labor. To greatly increase the availability of labor. You can do this with a lot of births, and we're finding out you can't really do it with immigration even.
So how would that work? The children that would need to provide that labor for me when I'm 65 would have to have been born already (they start work at, say, 20 years old). This has already happened, therefore, and cannot be fixed.
... which is of course another argument to take the pension away ... after all that's the only way to make it fair. You can play games with money, but money is an abstraction. You cannot raise up the necessary amount of people, the amount of people politicians promised us in trade for votes. It's not a matter of priorities anymore either, we're past the point where using 100% of the labor force would work.
> How would that work? Could you explain? Because the only way to do that is to lower the price of labor.
why do you think the only way to improve things for workers is to lower the price of labor? Workers can get better benefits when others stop pocketing the money that should have gone to paying for those benefits. Maybe the CEO whose pay has gone up 940% while the typical worker's compensation has risen only 12% over the same amount of time can cut several hundred off that percentage, earn less but still obscene amounts of wealth, and provide better benefits for the workers they've been stealing from for decades.
Only a select few can acquire that kind of retirement and it's borrowed from everyone else. It's selfish.
The pension generations over spent and borrowed heavily to fund their retirement and lifestyles. The subsequent generations pay for that. It's selfish and short sighted.
It's more sustainable than many other business practices. Nobody is worried about sustainability when CEOs are making hundreds of times more money than the average employee at the same company or when shareholders relentlessly enshitify everything so that they can keep getting more and more profit quarter after quarter.
pension plans were not only sustainable since they started in 1875, but the economy thrived and companies grew powerful while workers had them. Historically, some companies tried to screw over their workers and mismanaged their pension funds, resulting in problems down the line, but that was mostly greed.
Funny how, when they talk about executive compensation, platinum-plated perks, corporate parties with lobster stacks and vodka fountains for the top brass, and of course, dividends and stock buybacks--not a peep about how sustainable it is. But when you talk about pensions and employee salaries, all of a sudden, everyone's so concerned about it being sustainable...
I don't think you understand my issue with this persons pay(and not theirs but alot of city workers). I am fine with a private company paying out of their profits any amount they deem reasonable to a retired leader. Where I have the issue with this is his retirement is bankrupting the entire state/county/city(this is in California) and depriving working productive citizens vital amenities. Having a $300k per year pension is beyond extravagant and is not needed to sustain a healthy lifestyle. I mean looking at tax returns and income brackets that would put his retirement salary(not including 401k and social security) well into the top 5% of all earners and he is not even working.
US GDP per capita is ~80k. IF you eliminated every billionaire and leveled every salary, this is the max you could get. Much less in actuality, because you would have a universal tax rate of about 40% on that to support the federal government, so ~50k per person after taxes.
I don’t think that retired fire chief’s (or school teachers') retirement is what’s wrong: what’s wrong is that most of us will not have a retirement that good. Why is that? It is possible to answer that question without tearing down someone else’s situation.