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Jim,
Many of your points are completely valid. (Can you believe a teacher is saying this! I'm a conservative in a blue state and surrounded by liberals at work!) You are correct, my 7% plus interest will not cover the money paid out to me during my retirement. My contributions do go to help pay for the teachers who have already retired. And I agree, I have no interest in paying into SS, although I have for years with all the odd and summer jobs I have had. I will never see that money again b/c I will get no SS benefits. I have no confidence it will be there anyway. I also have no confidence that the teacher retirement plan will be there either. As such, I contribute to a 403b - the public sector version of a 401k.
Our health insurance percentage goes up every year, and we have to pay for it all when we retire.
I understand your feelings about funding someone else. I did not get in over my head with my mortgage, why can't I get bailed out or special financing. I don't want to pay for those who made bad decisions.
Many of these benefits for public sector employees were put in place, I believe, when salaries were much less than they are now. There are still many areas of the state with low teacher salaries. Even still, I do think you are correct, if we don't get a handle of some of these unrealistic benefits, we are all in trouble!
My post was not an attempt to say how bad or good teachers have it, it was just to provide some information.
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