-By Warner Todd Huston
Having trouble making ends meet? Eating your meals from a dog food can? Lost your job, seen your retirement accounts dwindle or disappear, having a hard time getting work? Millions of Americans are facing these problems. Some, however, aren’t. And those some are government workers, apparently. Unionized government workers at that.
Doug Ross has a very startling post at his website that really brings this home in stark and easy to grasp numbers. Under the rubric of “How’s this for an investment” Ross gives us the following:
You pay a total of $124,000 into your pension plan and, upon retiring at age 49, you receive $3.3 million in pension payments and $500,000 in health care benefits. You receive $3.8 million in total on a $124,000 investment.
You pay a total of $62,000 towards a pension plan and absolutely nothing for health care (medical, dental and vision coverage) over your working career. Upon retirement, you are paid $1.4 million in pension and $215,000 in health care benefits. You receive $1.6 million on a $62,000 investment.
This is what happens when you work for the State of New Jersey as Ross discovered.
New Jersey, though, isn’t the only state in this situation. Nearly every state in the union faces these obscene budgetary woes due to the illicit power of public employees unions. Folks, this is our tax dollars going to these union layabouts! This is why public employees unions are antithetical to good government, dangerous to our democracy, and illegitimate.
Can you, as a regular citizen, get this sort of undeserved return on such a tiny investment in ANY venue, especially you pension accounts? Nope. But if you are a useless government worker a mere pittance paid into the system returns to millions of taxpayer’s money into your pocket.
All you have to do is sit around for a few years, do much of nothing, and cash in your chips at age 50 or so and you are set for life with millions in direct compensation and benefits.
This situation is insufferable, people. Public employees unions must be made illegal.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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