This is how you get a disgruntled voting populace that guts the public school system. Jersey City in particular.

Our schools are embarrassingly bad while costing a fortune per pupil.

I don't disagree, but this is about public worker pensions in general. It's all of them. Teachers, police, firefighters. Where they forget to remind everyone how expensive the pensions and benefits are while they complain about early career lower salaries.

tax me daddy 🤤

I’m sorry, why do they get pensions while the rest of us have to hand over money to bankers playing roulette?

Because they can and we, voters, let them.

Cause they get paid much less than they would in the private sector so those losses are exchanged for better benefits and a pension. If you want a pension you can get a public sector job.

[deleted]

[removed]

[deleted]

There is such a thing as regulatory capture. HCDO and their cozy relationships with public sector unions is a great example.

I don't buy this in the least. All these teachers, firemen and cops would not be investment bankers. A relative has 2 Ivy degrees, manages a couple of dozen people in private health care, doesn't make what a teacher of similar seniority would, and has nothing like the Bennies.

[deleted]

This is dumb. You used a 1997 article to say contributions to pensions stopped in 1996.

NJ Pensions were fully funded until Gov Whitman messed them up. It was made worse by Gov Christie.

In spite of their malfeasance, there have been pension contributions made after 1996.

[deleted]

First, all new hires get a 401k type plan with employee matching, like large company private sector employees do.

Second, for all emloyees who are not vested (less than 5 yrs employed, I think, it might be 10) refund their pension contributions and put into a 401k and match it. (yes, the employees pay into the pension, it isn’t free to them.) Then 401k going forward.

As for the vested employees, leave them alone. They have a legal and contractual right to their plan because they are vested. This can’t be abolished on the state level because federal laws also apply.

Over time (decades) the retirees will die off and the pension obligation will go away.

Doing something like this will be HARD. We can’t just wish this problem away.

Then your relative is doing it wrong.

Sorry it had to be me to tell you, but it's true.