Yeah, if you want to piss me off early in the morning, all you have to do is compare military retirement to social welfare programs like James Dao and Mary Williams Walsh did in the New York Times this morning;
As Washington looks to squeeze savings from once-sacrosanct entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, another big social welfare system is growing as rapidly, but with far less scrutiny: the health and pension benefits of military retirees.
Yeah, I understand that many of the recipients of Social Security and Medicare paid tens of thousands of dollars each into those programs, but, then they’re not “social welfare programs” in the traditional sense of the word. And military retirement isn’t either. There are scads of Social Security and medicare recipients who haven’t paid in a penny into the system. You fucknuts need to find something else to compare to military retirement benefits.
Is the retirement that autoworkers or teamsters get from their respective unions social welfare programs? Then neither are retirement benefits from the military.
But the idiots on whom they’re reporting are just as stupid;
Advocates of revamping the systems argue that they are not just fiscally untenable but also unfair.
[…]
Those critics also argue that under the current rules, 83 percent of former service members receive no pension payments at all — because only veterans with 20 years of service are eligible. Those with 5 or even 15 years are not, even if they did multiple combat tours. Such a structure would be illegal in the private sector, and a company that tried it could be penalized, experts say.
“It cries out for some rationalization,” said Sylvester J. Schieber, a former chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board. “Why should we ask somebody to sustain a system that’s unfair by any other measure in our society?”
Unfair? Unfair for whom? You idiots who didn’t retire from the military at 20 years? What’s unfair is making a promise with no intention of keeping up your end after the intended recipient has contributed his part.
And, oh, by the way there are scads of us who didn’t finish twenty years and are still retired, so don’t toss out that unfair canard without doing a little research first.
A wild-card factor in the debate is the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, which some experts say could avoid the stigma of cutting benefits while troops are at war.
“The fact that you are getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan does make it easier,” said Lawrence J. Korb, a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration who was a co-author of a recent proposal for reducing the cost of military health care. “When the war in Iraq was in terrible shape, it was hard to get people to join the military, and no one wanted to touch any military benefits.”
Oh, yeah, that way the nimrods won’t look like they hate the troops engaged in combat. I’ve got news for you…there’s going to be another war, you’re going to need the troops again, so no matter what you do between wars to stigmatize service will still rub off on your creamy smooth pale skin.
And now insult me by comparing me to state and municipal employees;
Last year, for every dollar the Pentagon paid service members, it spent an additional $1.36 for its military retirees, a much smaller group. Even in the troubled world of state and municipal pension funds, pensions almost never cost more than payrolls.
“Almost never?” That means that there instances of pensions costing more than payroll, so why say it? And, by the way, state and municipal employees go home every night to their families and never spend a night away from home without recompense. They don’t sleep on the ground for months, pick ticks out of the crack of their asses, sit on scorpions, fight off herds of monkeys in the dark and any number of other things that are almost a daily inconvenience to the troops…things that would have state and municipal employees running screaming for their union rep.
If you want people who will put up with the shit that soldiers put up with, there’s a price you have to pay for that type of person. Calling that price “unfair” after the fact is petty and small and proves that with all of your vast experience, you know nothing about that which you are speaking.
“At some point, the cost pressures by the retirement benefits will really start to impede military capabilities.”
Not like having a hollow force will.