This is my first diary so I am clueless about putting in URLs but I have only been here in the last 3 months (not that I read all of the diaries, so please, I'm sorry if I missed yours).
With all of the commotion about SS and changes, I hope that most of the KOS readers are aware that the Federal employees, including the Senate, House, staffers, USDA employees, etc) are not part of the SS system. If I am wrong, please correct, but there is, as I see it, a shadow retirement plan that all of our elected representatives get into.
So we are asking a Congress to deal with a system that they don't even buy into!
If ANY changes to SS occur, I think that it it completely reasonable that the separate Fed retirement system END and that that all those in that system "feel our pain" and also pay into the system.
I am not a total crank, I have been paid off federal funds in science research for 30 years, but I have never been a federal employee.
Is the "other" retirement system widely known in the outerworld?
Is my proposal all that stupid? We all know that most of our congresspeople do OK after the job.
But we are looking at an elite system for people in the loop, and I know that they are are not wealthy.
Why did this extra-normal retirement system begin?
Standard talk is that one had to provide benefits to those coming in from the business sector to compensate for lower wages.
Anyway, this should end. And no one has mentioned it (with caveats above)