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You have to put 25 years in, not 30. Plus, what are we arguing about, late-40s versus early-50s?
That was phased out years ago. Presumably there are still some folks who will retire with 25 years in, but they'll all be out of the system soon. You're also ignoring the second part of what I said. Years of service are only one part of the equation. If you're way under the minimum retirement age of 62, you'll be hit with such a benefit reduction that it makes no sense to stop working. It's like being 40 years old and having $1 million dollars in a 401K plan-sure, you could take it out, but given the tax penalties why would you?
For the record, I'm outraged at the property taxes we pay in this state, but let's be honest here. It's mostly a product of the endless layers of government we have. NJ needs to dismantle all forms of government below the county level and be done with it. County school districts, county police/sheriffs forces, county fire and EMS, county public works, etc... 21 Superintendents, 21 Police Chiefs, 21 Fire Chiefs, 21 Public Works Directors, and so on. This is why Midwestern/Western/Southern states never developed the problems we have in the first place. Northeastern states clung to the old ways in which local government was run in England and Europe.
Last edited by Badfish740; 10-29-2014 at 07:20 AM..
You have to put 25 years in, not 30. Plus, what are we arguing about, late-40s versus early-50s?
The amount of misinformation out there is just incredible, IMHO.
I realize that not many people actually want to see accurate information at this point, and would rather react to emotionally-charged bits of propaganda, but for those forum members who are actually interested in facts rather than opinions that have no basis in fact, here is the 100% accurate information regarding retirement for those enrolled in either the Public Employees Retirement System or the Teachers Pension and Annuity Fund:
"The Service Retirement age is 60 or older for Tier 1 andTier 2 members, 62 or older for Tier 3 and Tier 4 members, and 65 or older forTier 5 members."
Membership Tier 1: Enrolled prior to July 1, 2007.
Membership Tier 2: Eligible to enroll on or after July 1,2007 and prior to November 2, 2008.
Membership Tier 3: Eligible to enroll on or after November2, 2008, and on or before May 21, 2010.
Membership Tier 4: Eligible to enroll after May 21, 2010 andprior to June 28, 2011.
Membership Tier 5: Eligible to enroll on or after June 28,2011.
Late 40s?
Early 50s?
Ummmm...no...not by a long shot.
I realize that the retirement age for both police officers and firefighters is lower, but since the propaganda being bandied about in this thread deals with teachers, I thought that at least some people would like to see accurate information. Those who prefer to deal with the wildly inaccurate statements that they have heard can--and will, I'm sure--choose to ignore these facts.
I don't understand this, someone please help. If most NJ residents hate high taxes, (I am not talking about state employee, unions etc), why they keep voting for democrats years after years in the state legislature?????? If people in NJ really want a change in tax policies, they need to change the polite systems from the top.
Has Chris Christie lowered taxes? Has he stopped spending? It's not a Democrats v Republicans issue in NJ, it's the huge level of cronyism and corruption. Yet, despite that, our taxes are "high", yes, but we also have a high level of service.
How much money do southern states spend on snow removal each year? How much do they spend patching up their roads every April? How many miles do their drivers drive over their roads, impacting the wear and tear and longevity of their roads? How many 100 year old bridges do they have?
People can keep criticizing NJ because of "high" taxes, but they imply NJ residents get nothing for those taxes. Granted, we can all argue all day over what we should and shouldn't have, but my town has $22M/yr going to Police and Fire departments. Go to a lot of other states, and they don't have that many "towns" with a population of 50,000 people that require a professional fire department.
And you know what? Consolidating my fire department with Orange, East Orange, and Montclair isn't really going to save us much. What, you cut maybe 3 $200,000 salaries out by consolidating 4 fire departments into 1? Honestly, how much are you saving? You aren't going to need LESS firemen. There isn't suddenly a substantially lower amount of fires to combat because you consolidated multiple cities' departments into one. Let's be generous and say you can cut some dispatchers, and more "administrative" positions, and save $2M amongs the 4 towns. if all of that savings went to my town's property tax payers, our property taxes would drop by $180/yr. but i just left out the homeowners from 3 other towns in that calculation.
You'd have to ELIMINATE the fire department and switch to the volunteer model. which works fine in rural or suburban areas with small populations. but it doesn't work so well in larger towns with 11,000 households and 50,000+ people, plus numerous businesses.
And we have great schools. go ahead and argue whether we're top 5, top 10, or top 15. whatever you want to put us at, the fact is, you can live in virtually any school district in the state and get access to an education on par with the private school education my parents were virtually forced to spend money on in Pennsylvania because of how awful most of the public schools in our area were.
So, are we "highly" taxed? maybe. but in many cases, you still get what you pay for.
And NJ isn't pushing out it's higher income people. they can't build enough condos in Hoboken, Jersey City, and other Hudson river communities with easy access to NYC.
We have our problems, but people aren't fleeing the state like many like to claim (well, old people are, and they use a lot of government services anyways, so is that really a bad thing?).
You two should probably take a look at that philly.com article, as it details plenty of people who retire in their 40s.
P.S. That posting by Retriever is true -- and you can also find it online -- but also omits the caveat that you don't have to be in your sixties if you put in the proper time. In other words, as with most things dealing with unions, you just have to know how to do it.
P.P.S. I like how he vaguely notes that the retirement age for police and firefighters "is lower." No, the retirement age for them is universally in the 40s. Let's just throw that down on the table.
What, you cut maybe 3 $200,000 salaries out by consolidating 4 fire departments into 1?
It's always odd to me how people are always like "that's only $100,000 of savings!" Now, I get that you might say "yeah, relative to the total cost, that's nothing," but that's sort of how you got to the total cost to begin with. Everyone's always accepting of waste and duplication and fraud in government. Yeah, they rail against it or we make fun of it from time to time, then everyone's like "....yeah, but anyways, just leave it the way it is."
That posting by Retriever is true -- and you can also find it online -- but also omits the caveat that you don't have to be in your sixties if you put in the proper time.
Well, there is "early retirement" available, with drastically-reduced benefits.
Is that what you are referring to?
When I drive on Route 15 north in Sussex County, I see three or four cops sitting in the median talking to each other. These are in towns like Sparta, Jefferson Township, Lafayette, etc where there is virtually NO CRIME. I did a little research and some of these cops are making like 80k. Plus, they're driving cop cars with all this technology (ruggedized laptops, etc) that are not needed in these small towns.
I see the same thing when I travel in Hunterdon and Warren County. No wonder every other house is for sale. Who can afford to live here in Sussex or Warren County with $10k in taxes to pay these bloated cop salaries.
What also makes my blood boil is that in many towns, you can't see where it says "Police" on the side of the car, as it is monotone in the same color as the rest of the car. They actually make it hard to see because their objective is to give you tickets and hide from you, rather than true policing we used to have that was as blantantly obvious as possible, in bright yellow or blue on a white car, to be visible enough to be recognizable as a police offer and help someone in need.
These pigs do nothing but harass people driving on these country back roads. Send these pigs to Newark to earn their salary and keep rural NJ on a *visible* county wide police dept. Free men don't need police.
So what you say is that essentially the "poor" along with the democrats are bleeding the "rich"? But I can feel a lot people complaining here are not "rich" by any means, this system is bleeding the "middle working class" too.
Also, many southern states have progressive tax rates too, NC, SC, GA, why they don't these states have this "Democratic State" problem?
because those states spend very little on public education, have less services, and the people are currently content with that. they also have more spread out populations. and they're in the early stages of growth, whereas states like NJ are mature and not growing as much today (look around, can you really add much more here without people starting to burst into bordering states?).
they are just fundamentally different places. which is why comparisons like this OP's list are absurd.
You two should probably take a look at that philly.com article, as it details plenty of people who retire in their 40s.
P.S. That posting by Retriever is true -- and you can also find it online -- but also omits the caveat that you don't have to be in your sixties if you put in the proper time. In other words, as with most things dealing with unions, you just have to know how to do it.
P.P.S. I like how he vaguely notes that the retirement age for police and firefighters "is lower." No, the retirement age for them is universally in the 40s. Let's just throw that down on the table.
it's blatently obvious you don't actually know much about the retirement structure currently in place.
Well, there is "early retirement" available, with drastically-reduced benefits.
Is that what you are referring to?
That's correct. As far as you emphasizing "drastically reduced benefits," that's just you trying to characterize it. Seeing as you said initially that NO teacher can retire after 25 years and that I was outright lying, I'm not really impressed. Obviously, someone who retires in their 40s isn't going to get the same benefits as someone who retires in their 60s.
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