The Salaries we pay

I was listening to talk radio the other day and something was brought to my attention that outraged me so I'll share it with you and see if it fires you up.

They were using a specific police officer, I'll call him Steve, to shed light on the craziness of the pension system that a lot of public employees are entitled to.

Steve worked for 20 years as a police officer and retired when he was 45. At the time of retirement he was making $90,000 a year. He then went on to work as a small town chief of police or something to continue earning income.

Now I'm fine with paying Steve the $90,000 a year. I think that's a fair salary. My problem is with the pension that Steve is entitled to. After "retiring" (since he went on to work another job it isn't completely accurate to call it retiring in my opinion), Steve's pension paid him $65,000 a year for the rest of his life. To fully grasp the amount of money being paid out here let's say Steve lives to be 85 years old. So from his retirement at age 45 until his death at 85 he will be paid $2,600,000.

So guys like this get to retire 20 years earlier than people working in the private sector, and they are guaranteed a sizeable income for life. All of this is on the taxpayer dollar. The bigger problem is that when Steve retires some one has to be hired to take his place and that person is going to get the same deal so now we are paying the new guys salary plus Steve's pension.

In my opinion this is absolutely insane that for some reason we think public employees need to be this taken care of. Big companies used to have pension plans for their employees, then they realized it was going to bankrupt them and they had to stop doing it.

Is there any legitimate reason to keep a system like this going? Public employees get better pay, better benefits, more holidays and more vacation than the private sector and have much higher levels of job stability. It seems like we are trying to bankrupt our local, state, and federal treasuries for this craziness.

Or maybe I'm crazy and am missing something here, feel free to weigh in.

Crazy tag games and what not

Ok, so Bekah Reed is apparently into all these crazy online games that have some how found their way out of the Myspace world and onto people's blogs. I've been told that I have been "tagged" and that I have to post the 4th picture from the 4th folder in my pictures on my computer. Amy has been begging me to actually do it so here is the picture. I am desperately hoping this doesn't make me some sort of "teenie bopper" for participating. This is from our holloween party this past year, it is Holli and Tim in their cactus costumes.

The predictable life vs. a life of variety

I was reading one of R.A Salvatore's books the other day and in a sort of journal entry one of his characters brings up an interesting observation about the lives we lead. This is probably not the case for everyone but it is something to consider when you look at your own life's ambitions. People live their lives trying to avoid changes or get through them quickly and move past them. They want to reach a point of routine and predictability in their lives so that they can feel comfortable and settled. Once this comfort is achieved Salvatore points out that people often find that their life is boring. Now obviously there are tons of factors that can play into this to make it hard to set this as a law of human nature or anything. Some people will certainly maintain a life of variety and always make new things happen in their life, while others will be perfectly content with the predictable life they have worked towards. It just got me thinking that maybe we spend a lot of time working towards things that we might not really even like. I guess that's all the more reason to try and be sure of what you want, though how to do that I can't be certain.

On a related note. I think some of us secretly like interruptions to our plans. When things like car trouble, jury duty, holidays, vacations, getting sick etc. come up we often put off other things that we intend to do or that we know we should do. I wouldn't say that its from laziness that we secretly enjoy the opportunity to put those things off longer, I would attribute it more to being unsure of what will come of those things. To clarify those things would be stuff like, getting a job or a new job, getting more involved at church, serving the community, pursuing relationships with friends and family, dating, exercising, studying, whatever. This thought just occurred to me so don't put too much stock in it, but I would encourage you to give it some though. Do you think you hope to attain a life that is set in routine and comfortable or will you always want new things to be happening and curve balls to come your way. Also, do you feel like a small part of you appreciates things that interrupt new undertakings because they serve as a sort of excuse that is out of your hands?