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<p>Maybe the $ went to fixing the bathrooms and leaking roofs. I’m sure schools that lack funding have a lot of problems besides just academics.</p>
<p>How funny that you are complaining about those darned overpaid high school teachers!</p>
<p>Sewhappy, I am on a 401K plan. I do factor in the need of cost of living increases for my retirement. Your FIL’s pension increase corresponds to ~3.7% year over year increase. I would expect my 401 plan value increases just as much or more over the same period of time. We get a big tax break as well. In any case, teachers salary is pretty low already, and I certainly don’t begrudge their pension. His SS and medicare are not free since he contributed to them himself, and if he has additional savings, good for him. I hope he is generous with his children and grandchildren as well. I think if more retired people were more like him in their finance, the economy would have been in great shape.</p>
<p>NJ’s tax situation is a mess, but the claim that it is all siphoning funds to places like Patterson, Newark and Camden is not entirely true, either, it is complicated. The property taxes in NJ are mostly to pay school expenses, last I checked a significant portion of the property tax bill is for schools.</p>
<p>In counties like Essex and Passaic, the property taxes are really high, because the county collects the taxes and they have places like Newark and Patterson to deal with, that have no tax base, so they hit the well off towns with high taxes to help pay for those schools. People I know have modest houses in towns like Wayne and Montclaire that pay ridiculous taxes, well over 10 grand, for houses that aren’t even relatively that expensive, and it is because of this.</p>
<p>In other areas that isn’t true, but property taxes are high even though the taxes go locally. Why? Because every town for the most part pays for its own schools. NJ is a small state, and yet it has 600+ school districts, every town wants its own schools, and they call it ‘local control of schools’'…problem is, that is expensive, each district has superintendants and such, coordinators, special ed teachers, etc…plus if you live in a place like Mendham or Chester, where there isn’t much industry or business, the tax base falls totally on homeowners. The same people yell about wanting local control of schools, but then get angry when their taxes go up to pay for it.</p>
<p>The court decisions that are being referred to were decided because property taxes pay for the schools, and it means that places with expensive houses, like Mendham and Bernardsville, have a lot more money to spend on schools then places that are poor or blue collar that don’t have the tax base. The court decisions tried to even out this discrepency, because while money alone cannot solve problems, there also is no doubt whatsoever that not spending on schools causes them to fail (take a look sometime at the education ranking by state in this country and their spending on schools, no big surprise that the states that spend the less tend to be at the bottom of the barrell). In NJ, the top school districts tend to be places like Mendham, Bernardsville and basking ridge, all of whom are well off and can spend lavishly on their schools…</p>
<p>There are also government issues, with pensions and such. Part of the problem NJ is running into is shortsightedness by the government, and it has come back to bite them big time. For the past 30 years or so, the governor and legislature have played a kind of slight of hand with pension payments. To balance budgets, what they routinely started doing was deferring payments they were supposed to make into the pension system, and thanks to changes in federal law were allowed to do this. Basically, what they did was put IOU’s in there, and they argued that it was likely they would never need to put money in down the road, because the pension funds would make it up in investment gains…well, between stock market losses and the money that had they made the payments when they should of, would have collected interest and been large enough to make payouts,was not there, has led to shortfalls, which is where a lot of the pension liabilties we see today are coming from. Nothing to do with democrat or republican, they all did it, in order to balance the budget they choose not to make those payments, and the bill has come due (not to mention that the pension system also allows double or tripple dipping, for multiple government jobs, or the fact that a government worker can work ridiculous overtime their last year or two, and end up collecting a pension the same as their base salary, and so forth) and it is a mess. </p>
<p>As far as schools go, the rational way would not be to use property taxes and also reduce the number of school districts, the current setup is a mess. It probably would be better to collect the money for schools from income taxes, where it would be spread among a much greater tax base to equalize out the load, people would see their local property taxes get cut as much as 70%, and more then likely would not see their income taxes go up much…problem is, people will scream about property taxes, but then will scream they want local control of schools, too…</p>
<p>"55% of Americans think today’s kids will have a worse life than their parents. "</p>
<p>45% of Americans believe we are descended from incest between Cain and his sisters. (Maybe they’re right, and that’s why we are so dumb!)</p>
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Comparable to what someone in the private sector with similar incomes would get would be a good starting point because (barring the likes of GM), most plans have to be actuarily sound and this would force people to look at the real current costs of future benefits. </p>
<p>The other issue that exacerbates the situation is how early the people can bail out. If private sector employees linger till their mid to late sixties while professing to not necessarily enjoying their work, surely those who typically say they just love their work should also have their retirement age tied to SS.</p>
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<p>This is precisely what USA is facing today. I have absolutely no doubt that white collar employment will go the way of blue collar employment over the next couple decades. Only service jobs will remain.</p>
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<p>Except that this would not be his total income – also has Social Security (~$20K) and a 401K (conservatively ~$10k). </p>
<p>Call me parsimonious but yes, I think he could manage to live off more than dog food on $56K per year. Healthcare is fully paid through state benefits and Medicare, btw.</p>
<p>Suggest you do a little research into the pensions of private sector workers. They do not get COLA unless they are union.</p>
<p>In response to OP’s question (Are you as hopeful?) - Yes.</p>
<p>In response to OP’s question (Are you hopeful?), I was until I started reading this thread.</p>
<p>Not too hopeful here. We’re assuming it will be tough and advising kids accordingly.</p>
<p>We are hopeful…more than hopeful. We are optimistic.</p>
<p>thumper,</p>
<p>Curious – what is the source of your optimism?</p>
<p>My father also told us 30 years ago that it is going to be worse off for us, I told him I didn’t agree with him. I told him with all the new inventions, we will live in a better world. I proved my father wrong. With our own children, we were able to give them a better education than we received 30 years ago. Both of them have great work ethic, they are smart, if they don’t like what they see, I hope they will have more courage to change the world. Every generation has said it is going to be worse for the next generation, but I am an optimist.</p>
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<p>I am an optimist by nature. I always view the cup as half full…not half empty. My source of optimism…my own two kids who are terrific, and see the world as a positive place and have great optimism themselves.</p>
<p>It sure beats being a pessimist.</p>
<p>Blind optimism is not an economic argument.</p>
<p>I refuse to engage in a debate about this with folks who have elementary school aged kids…those kids are not yet in the job market and have not yet attended high school or college…and don’t have jobs. And arent’ even looking for them.</p>
<p>Re: optimism…I would much rather wake up every morning feeling like this day is going to be a good one…and perhaps better than the past…and that my future is a bright one…than wake up every morning thinking my future is going to be awful and the day worse than any other.</p>
<p>[Quarterly</a> economic survey - USA TODAY](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/money/graphics/econsurvey/flash.htm]Quarterly”>http://www.usatoday.com/money/graphics/econsurvey/flash.htm)</p>
<p>Survey based on 39 top economists, Aug. 3, 2011</p>
<p>Just for the record, I do economic forecasting and assessment for a living.</p>
<p>Congrats. I know one of the economists surveyed above.</p>
<p>Does (s)he have college age kids to lend some credence to his/her opinion?</p>