Hands off my pension

zappahey

atomicsheep wrote: »

Well said Jim. All these public sector haters also seem to forget that civil servants are paying into their pensions themselves, NOT fully fuinded by tax payers.

Some civil servants pay into schemes. Many are non-contributory.

atomicsheep wrote: »

They also seem to forget that civil servants DO PAY TAX AS WELL!

If your salary is funded by the tax payer, then the tax deduction is merely a refund to the tax payer.

ILW

zappahey wrote: »

Some civil servants pay into schemes. Many are non-contributory.




If your salary is funded by the tax payer, then the tax deduction is merely a refund to the tax payer.

Or to rephrase, in financial terms, civil servants are net tax receivers.

zappahey

ILW wrote: »

Or to rephrase, in financial terms, civil servants are net tax receivers.

Yes but, despite some of the hyperbole in this thread and elsewhere, that does not make them bad people.

Most try to do their best in difficult circumstances, some do their best to do as little as possible. From what I have seen, that's typical of any similarly scaled organisation.

abaxas

Does anyone know how many people pay into the pot and how many are drawing a pension from it?

Then we can see if it is sustainable or not.

* we already know the answer to this.

RenovationMan

We need civil servants. What needs to happen is to make sure that their pay and benefits are commensurate with the private sector. Final salaries in the private sector are dead, the public sector should reflect this and move towards money purchase pensions. We should have equality in all aspects of life.

ILW

zappahey wrote: »

Yes but, despite some of the hyperbole in this thread and elsewhere, that does not make them bad people.

Most try to do their best in difficult circumstances, some do their best to do as little as possible. From what I have seen, that's typical of any similarly scaled organisation.

I never said they were bad people, but I have heard quoted on many occasions "we are taxpayers too" as a justificaton for the level of pensions.

johnny_storm

zappahey wrote: »

Yes but, despite some of the hyperbole in this thread and elsewhere, that does not make them bad people.

So being a parasite doesnt make someone a bad person? I see.

DBSausage

abaxas wrote: »

Does anyone know how many people pay into the pot and how many are drawing a pension from it?

Then we can see if it is sustainable or not.

* we already know the answer to this.

This will not tell us if it is sustainable or not, it will simply tell us if it is currently in surplus or not.

We need to look at 5, 10, 20, 50 years into the future (when current working people have retired) to see if it is sustainable. Since the future working population can only be estimated, this is not an easy question to answer with any degree of certainty.

ruggedtoast

Who is your public sector equivalent?

I would be interested to know how many people in the private sector are actually jealous of this actual person, and how many are just disgruntled at the concept of some nebulous mass of lazy civil servants fiddling flexitime and taking days off for cultural awareness training.

I know a few accountants in the private sector but as far as I know none of them are exactly champing at the bit to join the public sector. Likewise lawyers, analysts, Marketing execs, and IT people I know arent exactly constantly bothering me asking how to get into a not for profit.

All of these guys get bonuses, promotions and performance related pay, the public sector opposites get a pension that until comparatively recently was unremarkable in the private sector, and supposedly, more job security.

If you want to hire someone who actually has some skills you have to offer them something.

There seems to be some kind of desire amongst some people to have no public sector or government whatsoever, well why dont you hop on a boat to Somalia and test out what living in such a country is like for a while.

Pennywise

ruggedtoast wrote: »

All of these guys get bonuses, promotions and performance related pay

Just to clarify that the vast majority of private sector workers don't even get any benefits, let alone bonuses and performance related pay. There are SOME workers in the private sector who have good jobs and attractive perks - they're usually the cream of the workforce. Bonuses etc are certainly not common place throughout the private sector and certainly not at average worker levels.