Joined, pulling the rug out
I am officially a member of Retro Fitness. I joined on my way home last night. I can hardly wait to check out all of the stuff today. It always livens up your routine when you start in a new place.
I have not been sleeping soundly at all the past several days. I’ve been waking up frequently. Luckily I have been able to fall back asleep pretty quickly but I wake up feeling rather exhausted. I wonder what cycle the moon is in.
Florida, like most states has money problems. Florida is one of the few states that does not have an income tax however they make up for it by taxing everything else under the sun. One of Florida’s big revenue streams of course is tourism and the tax dollars generated by it. The recession that followed many years of living high on the hog caught Florida by surprise like everyone else. As a result they now have been coming up with “creative” ways to both save and generate money.
This year they were nice enough to raise vehicle registration and drivers license service costs by 50%. 50%!!!!!! They also had the lame idea of selling interstate toll roads to private industry (that fell through thankfully). They also froze all state employee salaries (applied to us as well) . Ok fine, hey times are tough right?
Well now there is a new proposal in Tallahassee to F with our pension plans. One of the benefits of committing yourself to a state job is the pension plan. The Florida Retirement System (pension) is one of the best run pension plans in the nation and is fully funded as opposed to running in the red like most pension plans.
Well some stuffed shirt politician thought this would be another great way to save money. He has proposed a myriad of changes to the plan, none of them good. Some of the most notable changes are pushing back the age where you can receive full pension benefits to 65 (from 62), changing the benefit calculation percentage down as well as averaging your salary over your entire career instead of your top 5 earning years and not grandfathering in current employees.
Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of somebody that has spent 25+ years in the system. You were probably looking forward to retiring in 5 years, enjoying your retirement and pension that you earned over three decades of work. Now, just like that there is the possibility that not only do you have to work 3 additional years, you will receive significantly less benefits for doing so. That is total, unadulterated bullshit.
To f with tens of thousands of state employees retirement benefits to address a short term budget issue is ridiculous. Do you think if the money crunch subsides they will magically restore the prior benefit levels? Of course not.
Imagine if you worked at something for 30 years with the promise of a Corvette at the end of it and near the finish line they tell you “sorry, you get a used Dodge instead” To further muddy the situation, a state worker can’t expect to get any support from the general public since there is such an anti-government sentiment. I’m sure the general consensus would be “Eh F the state workers and their pension” It’s one of those bandwagons that is easy to jump on unless you are the one that is getting the shaft directly.
The most hypocritical part of it all is the representative who is so eager to axe state worker benefits is a home owner in Naples with a property on the books for 5.8 million. It’s so easy to propose slashing somebody else’s retirement income when you are filthy rich.