Wow, slap in the face. (New York, Union: real estate, apartments, rental)

[Rachael84]

I'm a city teacher, and I honestly think LI teachers are way overpaid. The salaries should be reversed! Not because I teach in the city and would like the higher salary; it has to do with what suburb vs. city teachers have to deal with. Us city teachers deal with WAY more crap than LI teachers do. They don't deserve the overpaid salaries they get.

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by grant516

You must have missed the girl relocating from SoCal.

I stand by my belief- Nassau County NY is the most densley populated county in the United States without a major 'city'.

It is artificially kept 'suburban'- and larger buildings / multi-unit housing is forbidden to be built.

This rediculous practice will sustain the 1950s way of life for so long, including pensions & medical for your public servants.

Suck it up and change it, or stop whining about it.
You're not going to have it both ways.

Wait, I'm confused. Most people here are advocating less public servant compensation so that taxes go down. This wouldn't require LI to become like queens/brooklyn.

Most people are advocating less public servant compensation and using it as a guise that it will repair all the wrongs of Long Island.

They are hardly related. Taxes are high here, a 20% cut in public service payments will not at all make this an affordable or desirable place for businesses, and it is the local governments that alienate this place for the 20 somethings.

It may make plenty of you all happy to be paying a thousand dollars or so less annualy, but that is what is getting empty nesters to leave, not 25 year olds.

[I_Love_LI_but]

Originally Posted by grant516

You must have missed the girl relocating from SoCal.

I stand by my belief- Nassau County NY is the most densley populated county in the United States without a major 'city'.

It is artificially kept 'suburban'- and larger buildings / multi-unit housing is forbidden to be built.

This rediculous practice will sustain the 1950s way of life for so long, including pensions & medical for your public servants.

Suck it up and change it, or stop whining about it.
You're not going to have it both ways.

What does one have to do with the other?

[kmrlongisland]

Originally Posted by I_Love_LI_but

For instance, teachers' unions have insisted that their members' pensions earn at least 8% per annum and if the markets don't make that (and nowadays they don't)

Can you support this statement with a news article or government website detailing this benefit?

[I_Love_LI_but]

Originally Posted by kmrlongisland

Can you support this statement with a news article or government website detailing this benefit?

Barro said the crux of the problem is that most public pension plans — including New York’s — guarantee a hefty 8 percent return on their investments.

Read more: Teachers' pension fund under-funded by $36B - NYPOST.com

Civic Report 61 | UNDERFUNDED TEACHER PENSION PLANS: It’s Worse Than You Think

State and local governments collectively admit to underfunding teacher pension plans to the extent of some $332 billion, according to figures in their Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports. But that estimate is far too low. In order to produce such estimates, state governments are assuming, on average, that their investments will appreciate at about 8 percent per year for an indefinite period. Then, they use this 8 percent figure to discount future pension obligations to a present value, which is the estimate of funds that must be set aside currently to pay all future obligations.

Although this method of calculation is prescribed by the Government Accounting Standards Board, it is not a reasonable way to estimate out-year pension liabilities, even if 8 percent were a reasonable estimate of plan assets’ rate of return. This is because states are not able to pass along any of the risks associated with these higher returns to plan beneficiaries. Such shortfalls would have to be borne by the obligor, not the beneficiary, as would be the case in a defined-contribution plan.[2]

Unlike public plans, private-sector pensions are required to use discount rates close to the yield on high-quality corporate bonds, which make regular payments in fixed amounts with a low degree of risk to the bondholder. Currently, the rates paid by such bonds are about 6 percent, which translates into a discount rate in the 6 percent range. Pension-plan assets may be invested in higher-return assets, but because the added risk they pose cannot be passed on to plan beneficiaries (except, in certain cases, in a corporate bankruptcy), the plans may not increase their discount rates to reflect higher expected returns.

If the same standards that govern private-sector pension plans are used and current stock-market values are adjusted to reflect today’s stock-market values, actual financial liabilities for public school teacher pension plans are approximately $933 billion, which is close to triple the official estimate.

Teacher pension fund lost $9 billion last year while costs rose | GothamSchools

Together, the rising salaries and pension sweeteners have created a perfect storm: increasing costs just as the plan’s performance has plummeted in the down market. Although the TRS has not performed significantly worse than the market according to the new report, the annual rate of return it assumes — 8 percent — is high by most private standards. (To be fair, most public pension plans also use a number around 8 percent. Similar private sector plans assume a rate of around 4 percent.)

Assuming a steady and high rate of return leaves little room for error. Imagine that the fund fails to make 8 percent returns one year and instead breaks even. To recover the lost ground the next year, TRS will have to make last year’s 8 percent and this year’s, a total of 16 percent returns. The recession of the past two years has followed this pattern of compounding losses. As a result, the fund was so far behind last year that even the high market returns from earlier in the decade couldn’t make up for the losses.

Defusing New York's Pension Bomb

This is what happened in 2000, when Governor George Pataki, then-Comptroller Carl McCall and near-unanimous majorities in both houses of the Legislature agreed to add an automatic annual COLA for all retirees and to eliminate the employee share of pension contributions for all Tier IV workers with 10 or more years of experience. At the time, proponents claimed these changes would not require an increase in pension contributions, as long as the rate of return on investments remained at 8 percent.

If you want to understand more about the NYS teacher pensions, you can find a lot of information on their website:

Retirement Planning | NYS Teachers' Retirement System

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by grant516

Most people are advocating less public servant compensation and using it as a guise that it will repair all the wrongs of Long Island.

They are hardly related. Taxes are high here, a 20% cut in public service payments will not at all make this an affordable or desirable place for businesses, and it is the local governments that alienate this place for the 20 somethings.

It may make plenty of you all happy to be paying a thousand dollars or so less annualy, but that is what is getting empty nesters to leave, not 25 year olds.

I'm not sure your actually familiar with the statistics your trying to argue. A 20% reduction would mean saving thousands of dollars per year for the now-newer tax rate of 10K on homes. Lower taxes also mean more business' moving to Long Island, more taxes coming in, and a result of even lower taxes in the future. Just making a blanket "taxes are high here" is a rather undefined and open ended statement.

Further, high taxes are killing the younger crowd hence why we are seeing the mass exodus of the 18-30 crowd. We've lost 20% or so from that age group. Why? Hard to buy a home when the property taxes double your mortgage monthly payments.

Originally Posted by kmrlongisland

Can you support this statement with a news article or government website detailing this benefit?

You can actually find the public bargaining for unions online. Just do a search on it.

[I_Love_LI_but]

Originally Posted by Rachael84

I'm a city teacher, and I honestly think LI teachers are way overpaid. The salaries should be reversed! Not because I teach in the city and would like the higher salary; it has to do with what suburb vs. city teachers have to deal with. Us city teachers deal with WAY more crap than LI teachers do. They don't deserve the overpaid salaries they get.

Isn't it interesting how jobs on Long Island are generally MUCH LOWER PAYING than in Manhattan, except:

Public School Teachers
Police

Think of any OTHER job that is both on LI and on Manhattan:

Secretaries
Engineers
Attorneys
ETC. ETC.

None of them pay head and shoulders way more money when located on Long Island!

It makes absolutely no fiscal sense.

It is just because the teachers and police on LI have unions that outright own the people they are supposed to be negotiating with (county government and school boards).

[nassau2suffolk]

The Employer Contribution Rate is determined every year by the Retirement System, not by the union locals and varies from year to year. In the last 20 years it has been as high as 20% and as low as less than 1%(late 90's).

[I_Love_LI_but]

Originally Posted by nassau2suffolk

The Employer Contribution Rate is determined every year by the Retirement System, not by the union locals and varies from year to year. In the last 20 years it has been as high as 20% and as low as less than 1%(late 90's).

And you think the unions have nothing to do with influencing how high that rate is.

Also "annual employer contribution rate to pensions" is a totally different subject than "guaranteed annual rate of return for pensions."