Police Chief pension? (Davis: job market, buying, bankrupt)

[steel7]

Publc servents from the fed govt to the cities have it made in the shade & the tax payer is paying for it. Nothing is going to change anytime soon. Getting any job thats paid for by the tax payer is the way to go.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by eagle7

Publc servents from the fed govt to the cities have it made in the shade & the tax payer is paying for it. Nothing is going to change anytime soon. Getting any job thats paid for by the tax payer is the way to go.

Yep! That's what my wife and I thought so we did so. I was raising five children on a single income and had to ensure they had good benefits. My wife was raising two children on a single income with no support, whatsoever, from their father and she needed the benefits for them.

The retirement package was incidental to simply living but now that we're both retired, we certainly appreciate it.

We made knowing choices for good and cogent reasons 29 and 25 years ago
and offer no apologies for them.

[GLS]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Yep! That's what my wife and I thought so we did so. I was raising five children on a single income and had to ensure they had good benefits. My wife was raising two children on a single income with no support, whatsoever, from their father and she needed the benefits for them.

The retirement package was incidental to simply living but now that we're both retired, we certainly appreciate it.

We made knowing choices for good and cogent reasons 29 and 25 years ago
and offer no apologies for them.

Many of us may have made the same decision under the same circumstances.
However, my question is more one of sustainability. Do you have any fear that the state will try to cut your pension? What options do you see if the current system is financially unsustainable for the State?

[steel7]

I unfotunately have made bad choices in my life & i do wish i had gotten a govt job. I would even work in the food service area and wash dishes at the va hospital if i could. Any govt job is good.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by GLS

Many of us may have made the same decision under the same circumstances.
However, my question is more one of sustainability. Do you have any fear that the state will try to cut your pension? What options do you see if the current system is financially unsustainable for the State?

Sue! According to CalPERS, the Department of Finance and the courts, those who are working currently and especially those of us who are retired are protected under the law because our retirements and benefits are a contractural obligation for the state that trumps just about all other expenditures.

Contract changes can be made prospectively but not retrospectively. We should be safe.

Originally Posted by eagle7

I unfotunately have made bad choices in my life & i do wish i had gotten a govt job. I would even work in the food service area and wash dishes at the va hospital if i could. Any govt job is good.

It's tough, Eagle. The best anyone still working or capable of working who is not already locked-in to a suitable retirement of some sort can hope for is that the economy improves markedly in the near future.

[smoking357]

Originally Posted by eagle7

Publc servents from the fed govt to the cities have it made in the shade & the tax payer is paying for it. Nothing is going to change anytime soon. Getting any job thats paid for by the tax payer is the way to go.

Absolutely. Anyone who tries to create a new job or a new industry is wasting his time. Get a government job, and life is good.

[smoking357]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Sue! According to CalPERS, the Department of Finance and the courts, those who are working currently and especially those of us who are retired are protected under the law because our retirements and benefits are a contractural obligation for the state that trumps just about all other expenditures.

Unless Cali goes bankrupt and the US Government has to step in, at which point all of those obligations will be set aside and renegotiated.

Further, if the government monetizes the National Debt, hyperinflation will kick in, and your pension payment will be lucky to buy a hamburger.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by smoking357

Unless Cali goes bankrupt and the US Government has to step in, at which point all of those obligations will be set aside and renegotiated.

Further, if the government monetizes the National Debt, hyperinflation will kick in, and your pension payment will be lucky to buy a hamburger.

There is currently no provision in law for states to file for bankruptcy.

So we'll eat hotdogs!

[bakhru]

Originally Posted by eagle7

Publc servents from the fed govt to the cities have it made in the shade & the tax payer is paying for it. Nothing is going to change anytime soon. Getting any job thats paid for by the tax payer is the way to go.

You might want to look at getting a job as longshoreman on the West Coast. They make wages of 125k to 175k a year and have benefits packages that are worth another 40 to 50k a year.

[url=http://www.rense.com/general30/long.htm]Longshoremen, Making $100K Per Year, Won't Reduce Demands[/url]

Another job that pays remarkably well is pizza oven repair. When a pizza oven is broken, the pizza restaurant can't sell pizzas and has to shut down. Commercial pizza ovens can be pretty expensive up to 50k for the top of the line Middlebury Marshall oven which is the type of pizza oven you see at Costco. Because these commericial ovens are so expensive, most pizza restaurants only buy one.

Pizza oven repair is a fairly specialized business. When your pizza oven is broken you need someone to fix it and fix it fast. You might also encounter a pizza oven repairman if are trying to open a pizza restaurant and try to buy a used pizza oven at auction to save money (often you need to take apart and rebuild the pizza oven to move it) But pizza ovens don't break down so often that lots people decide to enter the business.

In northern California, you might have 1 or 2 companies that split the business for most ovens in this region. In other states, there just may be only enough business for one repair company. But this guy can pretty much charge as much as he wants. The company can easily get away with charging $400 an hour to repair your oven and it needs to pay its actual pizza oven repairmen over 100K a year to keep them from setting up a business to compete against the company that controls the territory.

Again this is not a position that requires a tremendous amount of education.

[smoking357]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

There is currently no provision in law for states to file for bankruptcy.

So? Doesn't mean they can't. I heard this somewhere else as a false hope that all will be well in California. It's just whistling by the graveyard.