Thursday, June 07, 2007

Not so boring - Sometimes I feel that Bull Dog Pundit, Will Franklin and I are the only bloggers dedicated to exposing the mess of public pension and retirement programs. It's a thankless job, for sure. Today BDP writes about the Ohio teachers' pension program with its perverse incentives and (surprise!) massive public expense due to gross inefficiency. Rock on, Bull Dog.

1 comment:

Linda Fox said...

Bless you. My husband is a retired OH teacher (he bought 3 years from OPERS - public employee system), who is now working in SC with me.

There are some arguments to be made for early retirement - in some school systems, such as Cleveland, it's unbelievably stressful to work. Assaults on employees are ignored (unless, of course, it's an administrator!), the racism is pervasive, and complaints from white teachers (especially men) are treated as evidence that the teacher is no good.

Having said that, I agree that the unions broker some bad deals for teachers under 15 years. That's largely because too many of the union leadership is nearly at retirement age.

The state board is top-heavy with old teachers and retired teachers. They scream loudly at carrying their weight on health care. Much of that problem is the male teachers who have re-married, with a younger wife and a new family. The cost of covering them is, in fact, huge.

Keep up the good work. I encouraged my husband to retire early, in great part because I feared that failure to do so would cost him hugely later. It's never the retired teachers who pay the price for the fund running out of money, it's the ones still working.