A.  Your ”part-career” workers are already accounted for in the averages. 

B.  For most of my fellow workers a “typical career” is forty years (usually following service and/or college) I personally stopped at 37 years only due to health problems. 

C. Public sector workers STILL don’t retire ten years before private, on average. 

D. Defined benefit pensions are still not a “pay as you go” system. 

E. When  David Crane promulgated the “2,000 percent increase” in pension cost ploy, it had good shock value, as intended.  A big, scary number, often repeated. We very soon figured out it was cherry picked data,  virtually meaningless.  But it at least had basis in fact. 

F. Meg Whitman repeated time and again that “California has 12% of the nations population and 33% of the nations welfare cases”.  Big scary numbers whose main purpose was to get her elected. Those numbers are still often repeated and are STILL incredibly misleading. 

The cases she speaks of are a minor part of the total California welfare expenditures. In TOTAL welfare spending, California has 12% of the nations population AND 12% of the nations welfare COST  In per capita welfare pending, California is not even in the top 10% of states. 

BUT! Her statement was technically true (although virtually irrelevant). 

G. ” 29.6 million active government workers would each require $40,343 per year withheld from their paychecks ”

Is another big, scary, shocking number, meant to ……..what?

But, unlike Crane and Whitman, this number has NO basis in fact. It is pure fabrication. Fallacious logic and/or cunning linguistics. 

H. Take your article to a fifth grade math teacher. Better yet, try to get it published in a reputable newspaper or magazine.  Let me know what happens. 

The glass is still at least half full. 

Steve– I’m not sure he can read.
==
Steve Mehlman says: Sure he can, he’s a charter subscriber to Rush’s Dittohead News. –
============
You two kill me 😉

You are using SSI number WITH SS numbers you fool Douglas!

The purpose of referencing the 30 year threshold for public sector pension “averages” is because that is the typical length of a public sector employee’s career. People in public service vest pension benefits within 5-10 years, and for any beneficiary who only worked 5-10 years, for example, there would have to be another person earning benefits who worked the other 20-25 years. The position was filled and the same amount of pension benefit liability was created, regardless of the mix of full-career vs. partial-career participants. And by the way, both CalPERS and CalSTRS pay recent 30+ year retirees nearly $70,000 annual pensions. If anything I was understating the amounts.

Since one of the primary points of the article was to ballpark the size of the total public sector pension liability compared to the size of the total Social Security liability, the 30 year mark to set the average was as good as any, since mathematically, you’ll calculate the same public sector pension liability regardless of the mix of full-career vs. partial-career participants. More generally, when you recite these much lower averages for pensions you must know this is misleading. Most of us expect to work 30 years or more, and if we don’t, we don’t expect to get a full retirement benefit.

As for the name calling, save it for when you’ve exposed a serious flaw in my logic or my numbers.

Last time it was $43,000 from each worker. Doesn’t he have a friend honest enough to tell him he’s making a fool of himself?

Scary part is, on the last article, there were posters telling him how right he was.

MY glass is at least half full, I don’t know about some of you others.

FACT WARNING TO REXIE: The following is a statement of fact, so I wanted to give you fair warning. Since you completely ignored the facts by S Moderation Douglas above, thought you would want to skip this as well.

EVEN IF NOTHING IS DONE, SOCIAL SECURITY WILL PAY FULL RETIREMENT BENEFITS UNTIL 2035.

(This has been a fact warning. Rex is free to resume his normal diatribes.)