LETTERS
LETTERS Retiring minds Thanks for the piece on government pensions ("A Pension for Trouble," Matthew Cooper, July/August]. A couple of days after reading the article I learned of a 69year-old...
...I also demonstrated that early retirement is real and expensive...
...Translation: class sizes are increasing, more classes are being added, and the work load for faculty members is increasing...
...Sometimes I think the worst part is that congressmen, talk show hosts, and media pundits don't suffer such indignities...
...Yes, some faculty in areas such as engineering, real estate, economics, biology, and psychology are lucky enough to be well-paid, and are still luckier to work in disciplines that are currently marketable...
...The average age of retirement from the private sector is 61.8...
...But my blood pressure really rose when I read it in your "Tilting at Windmills" column [July/August...
...There are by far more clerk-typist annuitants living at and below the poverty line...
...Finally, you further discredit your case by trotting out the hackneyed Hastings Keith, ex-congressman and about ex-everything else...
...No other rank-and-file federal retiree can collect five different pensions nor even legally attempt to do so...
...Please don't try to make a case with the monumental exception...
...That $203,595 figure might be "something like" accurate—but only if you exclude the compounding effect of COLAs...
...with equal ire, he has stuck up for the less well-off...
...They throw out barbed remarks to the one clerk who is working, not caring, apparently, that 16 people in line are much more annoyed by the remarks than is that one clerk...
...Finally, Hastings Keith has denounced the excessive benefits enjoyed by both his colleagues and many top-grade civil servants...
...A second clerk—the one at the Philatelic Center window—is not on coffee break...
...Contrary to the implications of your article, the average federal annuitant did not leave government service in his/her fifties...
...For years I have suffered in silence while nonacademics blather about the mythical overpaid, underworked faculty...
...Furthermore, you could have noticed that the increase in undergraduate admissions has greatly surpassed the increase in the number of newly hired faculty members...
...or slide the package over for him to affix the postage meter amount...
...Because of my job, I spend a lot of time standing in lines at post offices...
...TERRI KETTERING Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Postal modernism I'm sure the July/August issue will provoke plenty of post office stories to add to your file ["Why Americans Love Letter Carriers and Hate Postal Clerks," Jason DeParle] and here are a couple more: A foreign-born couple was ahead of me in an interminable line...
...Morrissey is president of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees...
...It is his ilk who makes the pension rules for themselves...
...And faculty pay scales reflect that thinking (or lack thereof)— salaries are low because scholars have nowhere else to go with their unmarketable skills...
...Class distinctions Enough is enough...
...they're income...
...A couple of days after reading the article I learned of a 69year-old city employee who received a promotion and in less than a month had retired...
...His pension increased from $26,362.44 to $27,116.40, a gain of $753.96...
...Just the less than one-half of 1 percent alluded to earlier...
...Those in the fast lane just call Federal Express...
...scholars from hundreds of disciplines...
...Finally it was their turn and the clerk weighed their parcel and then growled, "My postage machine is broken and I sure can't put $37 worth of stamps on this...
...example...
...Just one example: 343,000 federal retirees in their fifties receive full benefits...
...The clerk with the broken machine was standing three feet from his colleague, but he couldn't ask him if his machine worked...
...A Government Accounting Office study covering a 10-year period showed the average age of retirement from civil service to be 61.1...
...He perfectly illustrates the abuse of power of Congress and not the Civil Service Retirement System...
...You'll have to try the other window...
...If the average federal retiree lives to be, say, 76, then his annuity earnings would be something like $203,595 and not the inflated figure of $718,000 you reported...
...It's an example worth emulating...
...So they obediently turned around and went to the end of the line...
...I might also add, federal retiree annuities are fully taxed both as to the employee and government contributions...
...Of course, these benefits are taxed...
...The author replies: I acknowledged the problem of poor retirees...
...SUSAN GHANIAN Schenectady, New York...
...Have you ever considered a worst city or state official award...
...Secondly, those persons receiving large annuities (former congressmen, judges, and senior executives, not to mention erstwhile presidents) comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of all civil service retirees and are calculated into the national total...
...Tuition is rising, but tuition increases are not set by faculty members, and as such are often fought by faculty members (many of whom, given the demographic aging of the group, are currently paying college tuition for their own children...
...H. T. STEVE MORRISSEY Washington, D.C...
...There are some trends in higher education that seem to have escaped you...
...MARK WELCH Antioch, Tennessee The average civilian federal annuitant, according to the Office of Personnel Management, receives only $13,573 a year, and a surviving spouse gets just 55 percent of this amount...
...How could a publication which I applaud monthly for its fearless and refreshingly sensible analysis of numerous matters lambaste a large group of scholars by citing one (that's right, one...
...The rest of the "faculty bigshots," in such traditional fields as English, philosophy, anthropology, and social work, can't sell their services to a market, or a government, interested only in an obvious return on their dollar...
...She just stands and stares at the 16 of us who want to buy regular stamps, not the chocolate stamps or gold tone stamp pins in her domain...
...Not long ago I was 16th in line watching the clerk at the closed window enjoy his donut and horse around with the multitude in the back who always seem on coffee break no matter what time I go...
Vol. 21 • October 1989 • No. 9
