After being away from home for two weeks, I'm wading through the mail that was held for me by the post office. Included in that stack are several copies of Time. While glancing through their special issue on the "debt debacle," I came across an article by Fareed Zakaria about "why the debt crisis has hurt growth and our position in the world."
Zakaria is certainly left-of-center in his political orientation, and that's why the following from his article hit me right between the eyes:
"In fact, because of weak accounting requirements, politicians at the state level have even resorted to a kind of budgetary magic to satisfy key constituencies. When public sector employees want pay raises, politicians provide just modest step-ups in salary but huge increases in pension and retirement health care benefits. That way, the (fraudulent) budget numbers don't look that bad until years later, when the politicians who did the damage have safely retired." [Emphasis mine.]
Perhaps this has happened somewhere else, but WNY retired teachers--to whom this blog is primarily directed--will see it another way. If I'm not mistaken, the day I began teaching I was told that my pension would be 2% of my final average salary for each year worked, and that I could retire at age 55.
I do not believe the state of NY ever "sweetened" that pot for me. In fact, I recall that the state created new tiers (2,3,4) for new teachers as the years went on which were less "sweet" than the previous tiers. Retirement age was increased as was the individual contribution required to the retirement system.
As for retiree health care, if you retired from a WNY school district which is still paying your health care premiums, that's highly unusual.
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