alt Hacker News> bloated pensions
I find this characterization offensive. Who is to judge if the defined benefit pension if a primary school teacher or fireman, for example, is bloated? It's part of the negotiated pay package, nothing more or less.
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ryukoposting • today at 8:25 PM
My mom's a teacher. She would get a pension if the state could actually fund its pension program, which it can't now, and certainly won't when she retires in a few years. The government ones tend to actually have, yknow, morals and stuff.
Nothing personal here. It's possible for some pensions to suck and not others. It's also possible for a pension to suck and its beneficiaries to not suck.
At least here in NYC, a large part of a NYPD officer's pension is calculated based on a 3-year look back from their retirement date, so there is a huge incentive to work as much overtime as possible in order to bump that number in your last few years of service. There are lots of stories of NYPD handing out easy overtime in massive numbers for each other, particularly when they are about to retire.
Teachers are the easy ones to point to, it is hard to be mad at an underpaid teacher who receives a reasonable pension for life. We certainly can be mad at NYPD scamming the system to get $100-200k/year for life.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-nyc-police-overtime-...
[2] https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/newly-retired-nypd...