I’m sure all of us who have seen a political posting on Facebook have seen the numbers in the following chart:
In a fit of goodwill toward the acquaintance who posted that, I responded with a request that she stop sharing it, on the grounds that it is so stuffed with inaccuracies that is is useless for making any kind of social or political point.
I received a response from a third party who took extreme umbrage at my request, as follows:
I replied to her with the following:
Now, I managed to find the U.S. Code information wrt the President’s salary on my own, but I’d like to find a similar citation for the Congressional/Senatorial salaries.
Another thing to consider is this: How much would cutting pensions actually help? For example, take the case of the retired presidents. There are only four living retired presidents. That’s $1,800,000 total. Which is enough to pay for about 47 soldiers, if the figures indicated are correct. So even if we got rid of president’s pensions entirely, it would make no signficant different in the Pentagon budget.
The link in the quote to the Tax Freedom web page contains a link to about.com which directly contradicts the Tax Freedom assertions. It says clearly that member of Congress are under the same retirement plan as all Federal employees, and that their retirement by law cannot exceed 80% of their salary.
The about.com page also states that of 413 retired members, 290 had pensions averaging $60,000, and 192 had pensions averaging $36k.
Just remind her that those independently wealthy enough to not take a salary in office rarely tend to be concerned about the salaries of US army personnel and essentially never want to preserve or increase social security expenditure. See here for instance.
This is the real point that needs to be made. It is a really stupid argument, because even if the president and congresspeople were paid squat, ever, it would have an absolutely negligible effect on the national budget. In any case, I think it is right, proper, and good policy that the president and congresspeople should be reasonably well paid for the important jobs they do (albeit not always well), and these numbers are nothing remotely like the obscenely large amounts that many corporate CEOs (and even lesser corporate officers) get to pay themselves.
Frankly, quibbling over the amounts, or even over the truth of the “FOR LIFE!” claim, is not such a great thing, because it only serves to distract attention from the underlying stupidity of the argument, which itself functions to divert people from thinking about, and trying to understand, the real economic problems we face, and the real options we have for trying to deal with them.
Googling, the average SS benefit is closer to 14k a year. Plus, that’s only SS, which only accounts for about 40% of income of people who receive SS benefits, so that one sentence of the email is wrong twice.
But yea, what njitt said. The email would be stupid even if the numbers were right.
I would also take issue with the average pay of a soldier in Afghanistan. I just ran some numbers for a hypothetical married 22-year-old E-4 in the army, stationed at Ft. Hood, TX, who enlisted when he was 18:
$27,660.24 - Base Pay
$12,204.00 - BA
$4,227.24 - BAS
$2,700 - IDP (combat pay)
$3,000 FSP (family separation pay)
Comes to a total of $49,791.48/yr, and most of that is tax free when he’s deployed. Keep in mind that this is for a 22-year-old, non-college educated infantryman, and we’re comparing his salary to guys in their 50s and 60s who probably have law degrees.
People who post those sort of charts, thinking they are clever, are typically the sort of morons who are too stupid to understand why they don’t deserve to make more than $38,000 a year.
I mean really. What “political point” are they trying to make? That people we would hope were the best and the brightest in the country are paid too much? What if we added:
Average salary for an MBA with 20 years experience $190,800
Average brain surgeon salary $219,000
Average AmLaw 100 law firm partner salary $1,600,000
Average salary for a New York Yankee $6,186,000
Congressional pensions are based upon the three highest paid years. Someone who served a leadership post that draws a higher salary (House Speaker, Majority Leader, etc…) is eligible to receive a higher pension even if they were not serving in that post upon retirement from the Congress.
How much they can draw does depend upon age and years of service.
There is a limit of 80 percent of salary, but Cost of Living increases over a sufficiently lengthy time could boost a pension higher.
Not sure if there is a more current report, but this PDF report onRetirement Benefits for Members of Congress by the Congressional Research Service lays it all out as of 2005.
It’s a meme that floats around FB every so often, or I think I’ve even seen it here before. “A military family of 4 qualifies for food stamps! The injustice!”
Would that be an average soldier, though? I’m not certain of how the army is organized, but I would have expected that there’d be about as many E-1s as everyone else combined, which would pull the average down.
Note that of everything I posted, only the member’s base pay of $28k actually counts as income. If he had 2 kids, he very may well qualify for food stamps. Whether or not he could actually get them, I dunno, but I’m annoyed that people (such as the example in the OP) are quick to “forget” all of those allotments when talking about what a soldier actually gets paid. So I agree with you, the food stamp meme should die. But I haven’t seen it in a while.
