Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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bignflnut
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Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by bignflnut »

Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata and others sounded the alarm months ago: Now, by the end of this month, Mata says 72 Dallas Police officers will leave: 70 percent of them are retiring and the other 30 percent are going to make more money at other departments. “We’re losing some of our most experienced detectives: The investigator you want to come out and solve that homicide, that you need to come out and solve that sexual assault.”

Adam McGough, chairman of the Dallas city council’s public safety committee, is also expressing concern. “That’s the first of this number I heard of it. Anytime we have large numbers of officers leaving, it’s concerning.”

Most officers are leaving as a result of a crisis at the police and fire pension fund.
Follow this logic: When pensions are underfunded to the tune of $3.7 billion, there's essentially a run on the pension fund...where people know that if they don't get their hands on the funds, they won't be available to those at the tail end of the line. This encourages earlier retirements and discourages becoming the new hire who is funding the retirees while not obtaining benefit payments when his/her number comes up, years in the future.

So, you get less cops in a major metro area like Dallas. Then you get to the Baltimore type scenario where the ones still on the payroll have such fear that they refuse to respond to calls. (Being in a border state, one can assume that refugees and illegal immigrants will find Dallas more attractive with less police force.) This, in turn, leaves the citizen with response times that are wildly unacceptable and fatal in some instances. If the cops aren't responding, will an ambulance or a fire department? One can envision a scenario where citizens are on their own for quite some time in Dallas. Thing is, Dallas is the location of this story, but it's more widespread than that.
As part of their study, Boston College reviewed 170 public pension plans in the U.S. and found that their average 2016 return was an abysmal 0.6% compared to an average assumed return of 7.6%.
Understanding that financial matters aren't in the wheelhouse of pro-RKBA groups, it bears mentioning that the skill sets we hone at the range may become more necessary than recreational.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”–G.K. Chesterton-Illustrated London News, 3-14-1908

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"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams to Mass Militia 10-11-1798
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by glocksmith »

Yeah, for any number of reasons, job applicants are way down in policing. I just hope this doesn't detract from the "quality" of those individuals entering the profession...because...as we've seen in recent years, there already exists a deficiency there.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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The Kentucky Retirement Systems says 746 people retired as of Sept. 1 compared with 543 retirements one year ago. The retirements included state workers, police officers, firefighters and other local government workers.

Kentucky taxpayers are at least $33 billion short of the money required to pay retirement benefits over the next 30 years. Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has vowed to call a special session of the state legislature later this year to make changes. Last week, a state-funded analysis recommended cutting benefits for current and future workers.
With Police forces dwindling in numbers, it's a good time to reacquaint ourselves with the concepts of self-government:
I believe it is essentialfor the credible military, police, and first responders, and veterans, to step up and lead the way back toward a real militia system, and I think the way to do it is through a maximizing of our participation in the scant existing local first responder systems while we also build truly inclusive, bottom up structures, such as neighborhood watches, church security teams and relief societies, and town level watch systems, that invite all able-bodied citizens to participate, train, and organize, while we repeatedly point out that these do not constitute the militia, and while we advocate for a true revitalization of the militia, with maximum credibility.

The people of your state are more likely to listen to you if you are on the local volunteer fire department, EMT team, or Search and Rescue unit, and they are more likely to listen if the majority of others on those teams also call for a revitalization of the militia. And the people of your state are more likely to understand and embrace the need to revitalize the militia if you have lead the way in getting them to participate in public focused security and emergency response units, teams, and structures. They will be more civic minded, and through their training and experience on those teams, more likely to see the need for a real militia. And they will have some training that will help them once they become the militia again.

That is my plan. And I believe Dr. Vieira agrees with it, as being at least part of the solution, and synergistic with other efforts.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”–G.K. Chesterton-Illustrated London News, 3-14-1908

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"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams to Mass Militia 10-11-1798
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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Where did those people go for math that they could enter agreements and come up 33 Billion short, I mean that's more than dropping a decimal point here or there.

Seems our elected officials have a bad habit of kicking the can down the road, like the poor financial choices they make / agree to, are some how going to magically get resolved in a couple years.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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Bruenor wrote:Where did those people go for math that they could enter agreements and come up 33 Billion short, I mean that's more than dropping a decimal point here or there.

Seems our elected officials have a bad habit of kicking the can down the road, like the poor financial choices they make / agree to, are some how going to magically get resolved in a couple years.
They don't want to be the party-pooper who stopped the music while everyone was dancing, so they go along with the tune.
Furthermore, the party was unlikely to stop on their watch, (if anyone ever knew the name of the bureaucrat that set up or maintained this bogus system), so they will escape blame.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”–G.K. Chesterton-Illustrated London News, 3-14-1908

Republicans.Hate.You. See2020.

"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams to Mass Militia 10-11-1798
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by JediSkipdogg »

Bruenor wrote:Where did those people go for math that they could enter agreements and come up 33 Billion short, I mean that's more than dropping a decimal point here or there.

Seems our elected officials have a bad habit of kicking the can down the road, like the poor financial choices they make / agree to, are some how going to magically get resolved in a couple years.
Well, pension funds are simply Ponzi Schemes. Some may say they aren't, but they rely on continual income to stay afloat. They also heavily rely on proper investments to continually grow. When one of those two drop off, the funds start to lose solvency. Ohio was that way a few years back and their solution was to tack on 3 extra years till retirement for anyone with less than 10 years in the system. That helped in two methods...

1) It added 3 more years of income and 3 less years of withdraw to the system
2) It added 3 more years of interest on a large investment into the system

As governments are forced to cut down on employees they are thereby cutting down on income into the system. This hurts them when trying to pay on expenses they have to for past retirees. I think Dallas, much like many major cities, has their own pension system and for some reason, politicians like to steal from it to pay for other stuff since generally it is one of their largest funds. Heck, the feds do it with Social Security, so why not small cities like Dallas and Cincinnati.

Texas in my opinion has one of the best systems I've seen. You can retire at ANY age, but it grossly affects your pension. I forget exactly how it works, but when I looked at moving there two years ago for a job, the way it was explained to me was.... You pay into the system like any other pension system. When you retire, it then factors how much money you paid in and how far you are from the median age. It then factors those two numbers to compute your average yearly pay. So essentially you want to dump as much as you could into the system your entire career (not just your final three or five years like Ohio and many other states) and you want to retire as close to that median age as possible. Systems like Ohio encourage one to dump as little as possible in the early years of employment and rack up the dough during the final few years.

I expect sometime in my lifetime all pension systems to just implode on themselves. You can't rely on paying out more while paying less in and making safer investments.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by bignflnut »

JediSkipdogg wrote:I expect sometime in my lifetime all pension systems to just implode on themselves. You can't rely on paying out more while paying less in and making safer investments.
Only DC is at 100% funded, everyone else is somewhere sub 100%

Then we talk about the boomer generation retiring, selling assets and the downward pressure applied to asset prices...making it difficult to overcome the current deficits.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”–G.K. Chesterton-Illustrated London News, 3-14-1908

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"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams to Mass Militia 10-11-1798
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by OhioPaints »

Bruenor wrote:Where did those people go for math that they could enter agreements and come up 33 Billion short, I mean that's more than dropping a decimal point here or there.

Seems our elected officials have a bad habit of kicking the can down the road, like the poor financial choices they make / agree to, are some how going to magically get resolved in a couple years.
It's not just elected officials. Corporate management has done the same. Many non-government pension systems are woefully underfunded.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by JediSkipdogg »

OhioPaints wrote:
Bruenor wrote:Where did those people go for math that they could enter agreements and come up 33 Billion short, I mean that's more than dropping a decimal point here or there.

Seems our elected officials have a bad habit of kicking the can down the road, like the poor financial choices they make / agree to, are some how going to magically get resolved in a couple years.
It's not just elected officials. Corporate management has done the same. Many non-government pension systems are woefully underfunded.
The problem comes in a lot of factors and people living longer each year. Right now if one puts 20% into a pension and earns about say a 4% interest on it and puts into it for 40 years, they can only withdrawal for 12 years before they start withdrawing against others paying into the pension. Most I know though would freak at putting 20% in. Increase the return to 6% and you double the 12 years to about 24 years.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the government agency tasked with covering the shortfalls of private pensions. Here is testimony from its head saying that it will be bankrupt in eight short years. (19:50)
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”–G.K. Chesterton-Illustrated London News, 3-14-1908

Republicans.Hate.You. See2020.

"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams to Mass Militia 10-11-1798
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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UNIONS ? :?
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit gave us an interesting glimpse of the future last week when it ruled on an obscure case involving government pension obligations.

Ever since the mid-1990s, police officers and fire fighters in the town of Cranston, Rhode Island had been promised state pension benefits upon retirement.

But, facing critical budget shortfalls over the last several years that the Rhode Island government called “fiscal peril,” the state legislature voted to unilaterally reduce public employees’ pension benefits.

Even more, these cuts were retroactive, i.e. they didn’t just apply to new employees.

SNIP

Last week the First Circuit Court issued a final ruling and sided with the state of Rhode Island: the government has no obligation to honor its promises.

News like this will never make major headlines.

SNIP

Yet instead the news is ignored or flat-out rejected by people who simply want to believe either that it’s not a problem, or that the government has some magical solution.

The First Circuit just showed us what the solution is: cutting benefits.

And now the government has legal precedent to do so.

They can retroactively slash whatever benefit they want in their sole discretion regardless of what legislation exists, or what promises have been made in the past.
Starting to run out of other people's money...
First Responders aren't a special class of citizen (no special rights), but this is an injustice perpetrated against them. Their faith in their profession must be shaken.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”–G.K. Chesterton-Illustrated London News, 3-14-1908

Republicans.Hate.You. See2020.

"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams to Mass Militia 10-11-1798
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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bignflnut wrote:Starting to run out of other people's money...
First Responders aren't a special class of citizen (no special rights), but this is an injustice perpetrated against them. Their faith in their profession must be shaken.
And what is scary is this could apply to Social Security and Medicare as well. Heck, as a public employee I already don't get to see the SS that I paid in to for 5 years before starting in a government pension, nor that I continue to pay in to with part time jobs. But there is no guarantee for either but most think they will always be there. Save and invest as much as possible I always say.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

Post by docachna »

JediSkipdogg wrote:
bignflnut wrote:Starting to run out of other people's money...
First Responders aren't a special class of citizen (no special rights), but this is an injustice perpetrated against them. Their faith in their profession must be shaken.
And what is scary is this could apply to Social Security and Medicare as well. Heck, as a public employee I already don't get to see the SS that I paid in to for 5 years before starting in a government pension, nor that I continue to pay in to with part time jobs.
Jedi, not only are YOU going to get screwed out of most or all of your Social Security, your wife will get little or none or her widow's benefits based on your earnings, if you should pre-decease her.

Google the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). My wife taught a number of years in a state other than Ohio; they had a pension plan where they did contribute to SS, unlike Ohio. She then returned to Ohio and taught until retirement. She will get little or no SS, and will get little or no widow's benefits if I die before her.

This has been in effect since back in the Carter and Reagan administrations. Very draconian provisions that affect a whole ton of people - many of whom don't even realize it until they're on the eve of retirement.

Don't hold your breath for anybody to propose a bill to correct this, since it would increase the obligations of the Social Security fund - not the direction we're moving in right at the moment.
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Re: Why pensions matter to your self-defense

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carmen fovozzo wrote:UNIONS ? :?
It takes management and owners to sign the contract as well.
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