Have you been watching what is happening with the California budget and other states? They are broke and getting worse. If things stay the same, there will be no hope for the USA and our children. Like many big problems, they are made up with a lot of smaller items and one of the best ways to solve the big problem is to start by solving the smaller problems. Sounds like a good idea to me. The basic problem is compensation in all forms for public employees. That is where I am going to start.
First, let's look at professional football players. We say that they "play" football, but it is actually just an other job. We also know that we do not see many professional football players who are over 40 years old. When they can't work any more, do they qualify for disability or workman's compensation? I don't know, but they would if they worked for the state. They do belong to unions like most public employees. Do you think professional football players should qualify for disability or Workman's compensation from age 40 to 65?
Next, let's look at airline pilots. To keep their pilot's licence, they have to have almost perfect eye sight. As a pilot, I know how difficult this is for one of us older pilots. As a private pilot, I do not have to meet the high standard of professional pilots. When a pilot's eyes sight goes, should they be eligible for disability or workman's compensation? You see some older pilots, but not too many.
How about policemen or fire fighters? I read someplace that in California the state troopers mostly go onto disability by age 50 and remain there until they actually retire with full benefits at age 65. This means that they only work from about age 25 to age 50, or just 25 years. They then bleed the tax payers for an additional 35 years. Is it no wonder that our states are all broke. What can we do about this? The public employees are "gaming" the system and they have gotten very good at it.
I do not have a problem with disability or workman's compensation, but I do have a problem with all the gaming that is going on in the public sector. Our legal and compensation systems should "make people whole", but not make them better off then they were before. A friend of mine brought one of his friends to my farm to bear hunt and I was surprised that the person could hunt during the week and was told that he was a policeman and he was on disability. He did not have any problem climbing a tree and using a bow. It was clear to me that he was gaming the system and the tax payers. What I think we should do is to "make the person whole", and that means allowing them to take a public job that they can do with their disability and if it pays less than their old job, they should get disability payments to make up the difference. This would make them whole.
I know that there are many public area jobs that 99% of disabled people could do. It might be a lot different from their original job, but it is still a job that needs to be done. I feel this would put a big hole in the gaming that is now going on in public compensation.
The nest point that follows from this argument is the desire to increase the age at which a person can go onto social security or public retirement programs. Some go on retirement as early as age 55 or 60. We need to push this out to at least 70 years old and soon. If some people don't feel that they are able to work until 70, then we should do the same thing as we do for disability and workman's compensation and transfer them to less stressful jobs. What we have to do is to eliminate the loop hole of gaming the systems as they do now. Every time you see one of these loop holes, you should demand that it be plugged.
