Hi guy`s
I recommend a book called ( Government Racket) WASHINGTON WASTE FROM A TO Z. It is written by MARTIN L. GROSS. Its one of those books that you can`t put down untill you finish reading it all. It exposes our government, and the waste of our tax dollars. What you don`t know about government spending is costing you a fortune. Its, a bantam book, and you can probably get it on e-bay or your local book store.
Here`s an example:
Mr. John Q. Bureaucrat is retiring from the federal government in 1993 with a broad grin spread across his face., Why not? he`s had a nice career, ending his days as a GS-15, a specialist rank just below the top executive levels. His salary in his last year was $85,000. He`s only fifty-five, but he`s put in 30 years, coming to Washington not long after graduating from the University of Michigan.
How will he live now that he`s retired? VERY WELL. He has a new job for the next ten years until he`s sixty-five, the usual retirement age, at a nonprofit organization in Washington. It`s not as good as his old government position, but he`ll get $55,000 a year. How large a pension will he get from Uncle Sam? Well that`s why he`s smiling. :-)
His pension, like that of most federal retirees, will be--according to a govenment retirement expert--approximately 70% of the highest of his last three years pay. For Mr. J. Bureaucrat that well be $56,100 a year, a number that will automatically rise each year with the cost-of-living adjustment. So, assuming only a 3.5% inflation rate, ten years after his retirement he will be receiving as much from the taxpayers as when he was working for the government. A pension of $85,000.00 Absolutely :twisted:
How did it get there, and how can we possibly afford it? In 1984, the government started a new pension system, surely the richest in America. It`s called FERS, (FEDERAL EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT SYSTEM), and it`s a triple-threat scheme.
Part 1 is called a (DEFINED BENEFIT). Mr. Bureaucrat contributes less that 1% of his salary, or $680.00 his last year of employment. To that, over the period of his career, the government will add more that twenty times as much. :twisted:
Part 11 is Social Security, same as we all pay. He contributes 6.2% of his salary (Medicare is separate), and the government adds the same.
Part 111 is an investment plan --in stocks, bonds, or government securities--to which he can contribute 5% of his salary. The government will match it dollar for dollar. Even if he decides to contribute nothing. Uncle Sam will pitch in 1% free of charge. :twisted:
In all, the federal employee is putting is 12% of his gross paycheck if he takes full advantage of the plan. But the generous govenment is adding an additional 26.4% of his salary each year for his retirement. For the person making $85,000.00., it means a yearly taxpayer contribution of $22,440 to his retirement account. In fact, the ratio of government subsidy is much hugher for people who don`t take advantage of the 5% investment scheme. Then the retiree put in on 7% and the govenment still adds 21.4%, or three times as much.
But, we might amment, the fify-five-year-old retiree is still to young to receive his Social Security benefit. Isn`t he? Wrong. The govenment pays him a shadow (SPECIAL SOCIAL SECURITY SUPPLEMENT), from its coffers from the time he`s fifty-five until he`s sixty-two, just as if he were older. :roll:
So, in the case of Johyn Q. Bureaucrat, he`ll receive his $56,000.00 pension from the government, and get $55,000.00 more from his job,l then truly retire at age sixty-five. By then, $85,000.00 salary, and he`ll have a new pension from his second job, what is known in the trade as (DOUBLE DIPPING). By the time he`s sixty-five, his combined pension will be well over $100,000.00 a year. :eek:
How much will Mr. Bureaucrat cost Uncle Sam in his retirement? Today a man of fifty five has a life expectancy of twenty-three years. Beginning with his $56,100.00 pension in 1993, and ending with his death in 2017, when his pension will have risen to $130,000.00 a year, the total cost of the retirement payout will be over $2 million, or $2,230,000.00 to be exact. :evil: (However, if the retiree is Mrs. Mildred Bureaucrat, who will live an additional four and a half years, the payout will be a half million dollars more).
Let`s also take the case of a non-executive, a GS-10 who began as a GS-2 file clerk, and has risen to become secretary to a top officer, with a salary of $40,000.00 during her last year. She will retire at fifty-five with a pension of $28,000.00 and a total payout of $1.7 million.
This year, retirement benefits for civilian government employees will cost $35 billion, plus another $22 billion for military people. Thats a lot of money, but it`s slated to get much worse.
The government`s unfunded pension liability for federal employees is already $1.4 trillion. By the year 2000, the pension payout will be $80 billion a year and the liability up in the $3 trillion range. And that`s only the beginning.
WHAT CAN BE DONE? :twisted:
Obviously the government has to stop this massive hemorrhaging by reducing the pension benefits by at least 30%, and returning the federal employees to the less-than-perfect world inhabited by the rest of us. That will save us $10 BILLION A YEAR.
Oh, yes, Forget about that business of paying out Social Security benefits to government workers at age fifty-five, thats just not nice. :-
D :-D :-D
bullet maker
