Bullshit. Click on the link in post #45 to have your ignorance fought.
I’m picturing a retired military Republican who works as a contractor at a base in Florida, which has no state income tax, complaining about about entitlements and taxes; just don’t cut his.
I’m trying to imagine why the person in question’s political affiliation matters for the purpose of this discussion.
From http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10051.html ( you’ll get better info from the source than " Today’s seniors")
The Windfall Elimination Program and Social Security Offset only apply to those whose government jobs were not covered by Social Security. Mine have been.
But you miss the point. I pay in my 40 quarters to SS and am eligible for $500/month. I then quit and work as a teacher and my SS-exempt pension is worth another $500/month yet I do NOT get $1000/month because of the offset.
The point is not about people who only work in a SS-exempt profession their entire lives but those that earn their SS but don’t get it because they have a second pension that happened to be SS-exempt.
I suppose I feel some sympathy for people who made career decisions before the law changed in early 80’s. Beyond that, it seems that people made a choice (not always directly, sometimes via collective bargaining), got the benefit of that choice (no SS withheld) and now want to change the rules.
The reality is that SS doesn’t pay a fixed return. You get less back percentage-wise the more you earn. That is part of the reason that annual contributions are capped. Without the current rule Saint Cad would have his/her benefit calculated like his/her career earnings were just those first ten years. It is a little inaccurate to say he/she is eligible for $500 when that is calculated on a subset of the full career earnings picture. Instead of being unfair, it is accurately reflecting that persons interaction with the system versus full career SS contributors.
The annual SS benefit statments have clear caveats that they are assuming you will continue to work/contribute.
After 25 years I retired from a full time law enforcement job (with pension/health insurance retirement benefits) and took a position part-time with another department (no benefits). One position with county government, the other state, so they are not related when it comes to budgets and such. Lots of cops do this after retirement and many agencies hire them. Some agencies use part-time cops to supplement their full-time staff, work when the full timers are on vacation or call in sick, or during special events and such. They don’t have to pay benefits like health insurance because we already get that from the job we retired from. Plus they don’t have to pay the expense of putting us through the academy because we’ve already been there.
Yes I’m “double dipping” with this job but if you do the math you’ll see it is more cost effective to have 2 part-time officers that were retirees than to hire 1 full time officer.
I Work as DoD contractor on AF base in the SW. It’s just in-believable how these retirees manage to minipulate the system to get these high paying GS job after retirement as high ranking military member. I was in AF for an enlistment and had a wonderful time. But I didn’t retire. What bugs me about these types, is the you already have a pension, why do feel the need to occupy a job in Federal Government that could to someone that the work and start on their nest egg? You guys need to re-think your spending habits, cause your Fing it up for the res that of us. :mad: for the guys out there triple dipping…? Shame on you, your stealing.
In Canada they can. Pretty often someone will retire from the military and then get a job in the government or private sector. You get a paycheque and a pension simultaneously. You did have to pay a portion of your previous job’s paycheque to get that pension though, and you’re actually working at the new job, so no real issue there.
Typically enlisted people retire from the military long before they’re incapable of working, which is why it’s so common. I think in Canada you can retire from some public sector positions when your age + years of service equal 65, and you need to work there 35 years to get a maxed out pension. If you joined at age 22 (just graduated) you could retire at age 44, but since you were only there 22 years you wouldn’t get the max pension. If you went 35 years you could retire at age 57, which is a little early, but not excessively so. A lot of Canadian public sector employees retire at age 60 for this reason.
When Rick Perry was running for President the first time, he “retired” from the Texas Legislature while collecting his governor’s salary. I guess that’s two different positions, making it legal.
So they shouldn’t hire someone who is thoroughly familiar with the work and the system, has 20-30 years experience and management skills, and hire you instead, who can’t write a coherent sentence? Got it.
Since I have expertise in the OPs question, and can clear up some of the misapprehensions, I’ll take a stab at it.
Until 1987 the federal civilian employees were paid under a program called CSRS. There aren’t very many CSRS employees still serving. However, CSRS did not get social security for their federal job. If they had earnings outside the federal government then they could collect social security for that.Some people hearsabout government retirement and believe it’s like CSRS, that isn’t how the modern government retirement system works, and hasn’t worked for nearly 30 years. Stop bitchin’ about it. It’s dead, over and gone.
In 1987, the feds ditched CSRS and came up with the new system where your retirement consisted of FERS (a very, very small pension) TSP (a kind of 401K) and social security. Social security payments are taken out of your earnings in this case.
So, I was on active duty for 10 years, switched to the reserves for 20 (some of you can figure our my rank from that). While I was in the reserves, I worked as a Civil Servant under FERS/TSP and paid into Social Security. I also paid back my military time to get credit for that in FERS. At age 60 I started receiving my Reserve retirement. I’m also a disabled vet with compensation, so I get money for that.
This makes me a quintuple dipper. Probable one of only a few hundred in the US.
If you are enraged by this, or feel it’s unfair, let me say this: Except for the disability, I planned for all this for 30 years. I dug into the system, and I understood it. I planned every move solely with an eye towards how it would affect my retirement.
The reason the government set this retirement system up in this manner was because it wanted to maintain critical knowledge for the use of the Department of Defense. I have critical knowledge that the government has benefited from for decades, therefore, I do deserve the benefits that have accrued to me, and that were set aside to encourage people like me to stay in government employment. That’s a strategic decision on behalf of the government, that they want to maintain knowledgeable people of military backgrounds in the Civil Service.
One of the problems with double dipping is that it is often abused. One common scenario works like this:
- Joe works for the federal government.
- Joe retires at 55.
Now,
- Acme is a contractor for the federal government.
- Acme’s customer (who works directly for the federal government as civil servant) tells Acme to hire their long-time friend Joe.
- Acme doesn’t want to hire Joe because Joe has no skills. But if Acme does not hire Joe, Joe’s government customer will be upset.
- Acme reluctantly hires Joe.
- Joe socializes all day, knowing he can’t be fired.
This is a violation of the Code of Ethics, and people go to jail for this. Including SES’s, Generals, and Colonels in the Pentagon. However, in the case you mention, once the bigwig retires, Joe loses his job. It’s not going to last forever.
I have to take a test on this EVERY YEAR. It’s illegal, and punishable.
If you know of an example of this, you should contact the government Ethics Office associated with the program and ask for copies of the material explaining the ethics regulations. If after going through the regs, you think you have a case, you should report it to the Office of Ethics.
And for what it’s worth, if you work for a business with no government contracts, you still have the problem of nepotism.
I’m not denying that such things occur, but it must be stated that if a government employee bullies a contractor into hiring a retiring government employee, with the implied or explicit threat that the contractor would lose business if it did not hire such a person, is subject to prosecution on several possible criminal charges, including extortion or depending on the circumstances even more serious charges.
I don’t think anyone should walk away from that earlier post with the impression that it is legal for Federal officers to threaten companies into hiring government retirees.
ETA: simulpost with the Office of Government Ethics post, too.
No bullying or threatening is necessary. The government tells Acme, “We want you to hire Joe.” Acme is fearful of making its customer upset for any reason, so Acme hires Joe.
If Acme does not hire Joe, could it result in repercussions? Maybe. Maybe not. But Acme doesn’t want to take the chance. Hiring Joe is the least risky option.
-The government dictating hiring of private company employees is laughable, I mean I suppose it could occur, but it wouldn’t be likely and would be foolhardy for the front line manager/CO(KO to my DoD friends) to stick his or her neck out like that.
-Heck, if the employee left for the contractor, he wouldn’t be able to work on relevant government projects for the one year as required by OGE.
-I work for the Federal government and can assure you, my retiring co-workers could go work for contractors as they have the critical skills/knowledge necessary to be successful in their 2nd career and that is what the contractor values much more so than the government usually does.
FYI, none of my 30 coworkers in my department are on CSRS; all are FERS.
Let’s get real: what you’re describing is at the very least a grave breach of well-known ethics and regulations, and almost certainly a clear violation of criminal law that is punishable as felonies.
Just because you have personal knowledge of some situation where this has happened does not mean it is legal, no more than me knowing someone who broke some other law and may be getting away with it would mean that such person is allowed to break the law.
“Double Dipper” here. I do get retirement pay (retired officer) and pull a federal salary. If you retire from the military, buying back your time is a terrible idea–you lose retirement. There are a lot of ins and outs, but generally, military retirement is 2.5% X number of years served (20 minimum) X base salary (typically the average of your top 3 earning years). Civilian retirement at its best is 1.1% X number of years served X salary (typically the average of your top 3 earning years). If, however, you serve less than 20 years, buy back is a pretty good deal.
Remember that the military pays a lot of money to train troops. They need to incentivize them to stay in not only to get a good ROI, but to train and lead the younger troops. Additionally, you have a chance of getting killed or maimed. Therefore the government holds out a carrot–stay 20 and you get retirement pay. Stay 18 and you get bubkis–there was no alternative–no 401K–you left withthe clothes on your back. Most people did the mental math at 10-12 years and make a decision to go or stay. Now with the new retirement system that is more 401K-like, I think you’ll see a lot less people staying 20.
The government civilian side tends to like retired military. Particularly in the DoD, but also in other areas. e.g. while I have stayed in DoD, my friend has worked for the VA and the Forest service. His experience has been that the military leadership training is missing from other civilian govt organizations and, frankly, they crave the order and logic his experience as an Army officer brings.
My plan is to stay in govt service for maybe 5 more years, giving me about 16 years in civilian federal service, and retire, getting about $900 a month in federal retirement on top of my military. Obviously, I don’t think this is unfair. I made choices in my career that meant I had to be away from my family for extended periods of time, move my family every 3-4 years, put up with a lot of rules that don’t cover most of the civilian world and got paid less than most of the contractors who worked for me. The military retirement was compensation for this. When I retired, I had two job offers–one in the government with a $10K reduction from my military salary or a civilian contractor job where I would have gotten pay equal to my military salary. I took the paycut because of the opportunity for another retirement, relative job security (I’m not living contract to contract) and as a govt civilian, I still get to lead and make decisions rather than just execute an assignment. I’d like to think both the government and I benefited from the deal.
This is bullying and, as explained above, illegal.
Having scanned through this thread, I can see pretty much the same situation here in the UK. I worked for the NHS, which has a very good final salary pension scheme, and I also worked in the private sector which had an investment based scheme. I was drawing both pensions when I went to work as a truck driver with no pension scheme but reasonably good wages. I was able to work well past my retirement age, which meant that I also get an enhanced state pension.
Some years ago it was revealed that GPs were double dipping, by retiring at 55 (the earliest possible) on a final salary pension, and then immediately starting work for the same practice, doing the same job at the same salary. This was later ruled out of order and no NHS employee can return to work for the NHS and continue to draw their full pension. All this means is that they sign up for work with an agency as locums.