The Seattle Times has a feature on 82-year-old Al Ramey, who’s been driving Metro buses for 61 years, making him the longest tenured transit driver in the nation. Which is great, and all. But this particular section jumped out at me:
At age 82, he continues to drive one daily round-trip on the popular Route 150, connecting Kent, Southcenter, Sodo and downtown Seattle.
The longtime Burien resident officially retired in 2000, and currently receives a $2,795 monthly pension, records say. Ramey says his extra income from part-time driving pays for vacation cruises with his wife.
“And I’m not a sit-at-home guy,” he says.
So, if he’s been driving for 61 years, and he officially retired in 2000, that means he’s getting only $2,795 a month in pension benefits after 47 years of full-time service? That seems curiously out of line with the allegedly sky-high pay and extravagant benefits on which the paper’s editorial board disingenuously pins all of Metro’s financial problems.
Surely, $2,795 a month isn’t too much to ask in return for a half-century of driving a bus. Doesn’t sound extravagant to me.
(And as to the inevitable comments in the thread about double-dipping or something, Metro couldn’t operate its peak service without part-time drivers. If it’s not Ramey behind the wheel, it’ll be somebody else.)
And average SSI retirement benefits are $1290 or so, putting him probably at $4093 to TRIPLE dip on the government teat. Such luxurious living! He should pull himself up by the bootstraps to earn his own living instead of living off of the government dime.
If you have a tax-exempt 401(k) contribution and then take Social Security, by that logic you are also taking from the government “teat.” Or, you know, it could just be part of the social contract we all pay into. Don’t like it? Move to Canada, asshole.
So, just a few days after criticizing the use by someone else of a single, not-very-sympathetic case example
http://horsesass.org/we-cant-r.....something/
Goldy shows ’em how it’s done by making use of a single, highly sympathetic case example.
And he’s right, of course. Looking at the most extreme case of longevity in the nation, the pension doesn’t sound that extravagant.
It’s not very relevant to current Metro union member compensation and the sustainability thereof, which is a different issue, but it does make for a nice story.
@1 Actually, it’s not clear that Mr. Ramey does collect Social Security. Many former government employees do not, as their government pension replaced SS rather than supplemented it.
Either way, it’s important to remember employees pay into SS and pensions as a kind of forced retirement savings.
@ 4
Either way, it’s important to remember employees pay into SS and pensions as a kind of forced retirement savings.
It’s also important to remember that it’s the employee’s money being saved when people start talking about means testing by the government when the time comes to give the employee back his/her money.
@1 Sigh. Yet another wingnut moron who doesn’t know the difference between SSI and Social Security.
@5 Goldy’s point was that taxpayers don’t pay public pensions, public employees pay for their pensions. What’s your point? Do you have one?
Former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson got a retirement package of $400 million. I wonder why our trolls never post about that? I guess to them pensions are outrageous only if they’re less than $1 million a year.
For what it’s worth, in keeping with the capitalistic nature of our society, I made more money from stocks last year than I got from my pension, social security, and veterans disability benefits combined. In this country, if you work hard all your life, your reward will be a lot of pissing and moaning from cheap labor conservatives about how overpaid you are.
More proof that Obama is in bed with Wall Street banks.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101706908
Lets be honest… His retirement is about 33,500/year. He is a retired PERS-1 Transit Operator, and like many retired PERS-1 Transit Operators, they come back and drive part time to get things like health insurance and to keep busy (or get some extra spending money). Plus working is a great way to keep in touch with all the friends that you have worked with for decades.
@11 Yes, it’s just outrageous that an 82-year-oldwho’s still driving a bus after 61 years of service gets a paycheck and a $33k pension at the same time! Vote No Prop. 1! Thanks to the bloodsucking union, this greedy transit driver makes 1/250th as much as median CEO pay!
http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....n-in-2013/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: And we all know how valuable CEOs are to the rest of us! Just look around you at the booming economy — full employment, high and rising wages, everybody has health care and a comfortable retirement, we’ve never had it so good and we owe this munificent prosperity to the leaders of business and industry!
The $600 I’m making in the stock market this morning while posting on HorsesAss.org is pretty punk compared to the median CEO pay of $4800 per hour, but it still beats the miserable $15/hr. that cheap labor conservatives don’t want to pay workers. I’ll take stock flipping over working any day. It took me too many wasted years of my life to figure this out, but the people who actually produce something are the last to get paid in our capitalist economy. CEOs get to skim first, followed by bankers and hedge fund managers, then stockholders, and workers get whatever crumbs are left. Under a system like this, it’s stupid to work for money, because that’s the worst and least-rewarding (not to mention most heavily taxed) way of getting money there is.
Cheap labor conservatives will not be happy till he gets nothing.