Re:What Happens When a Suburb Begins to Die?
by monodeldiablo on Thursday October 12, 2017 @02:52PM
(#15460316)
I'm not an expert by any stretch, but my understanding is that plenty of pensions have steep early retirement/termination penalties, especially in state and municipal service. And if the full pension benefit was already small, any penalty may reduce it to an unlivable level.
As an anecdote, a relative -- who had 25 years of public service when he was 57 years of age -- would have only received 35% of his pension if he had taken early retirement (or jumped ship to private industry) at that time.
Keep in mind, also, that most public employees are ineligible for Social Security. And most of these economically distressed towns tend to be concentrated in counties and states with severe debt issues, where raiding pension funds is not uncommon. And sadly, benefit reduction continues to be an option in public debt discussions.
Re:What Happens When a Suburb Begins to Die?
by SilasX on Thursday October 12, 2017 @03:14PM
(#15460492)
Oh wow. I'm surprised that hasn't been made illegal. That creates very anti-public-interest situations (where a worker will be abused in every legal way because they know they can't quit).
Re:What Happens When a Suburb Begins to Die?
by monodeldiablo on Thursday October 12, 2017 @03:33PM
(#15460633)
Hug a municipal worker today. They deserve it.
Re:What Happens When a Suburb Begins to Die?
by SilasX on Friday October 13, 2017 @02:51PM
(#15468311)
To clarify, I mean they don't deserve a hug on the basis of being universally exploited and underpaid. Obviously they deserve, by virtue of being human, the kind of love typically expressed by hugging.
I keep hearing stories about this, but I thought that any such pension this absurd was illegal or retroactively corrected. Is it really possible to lose an entire pension for quitting some trivial amount of time before some cutoff?
I would think that it would, at most, mean that you would delay the pension[1], or lose a few percentage points off of it, or be required to make some "down payment" before it starts.
Where are these pensions where a huge value can evaporate over such a small thing?
[1] e.g. under an "age + years of service" rule, each year worked gets you two units closer to retirement, and if you quit, that just means you become eligible at half speed (age goes up but years of service doesn't).