If you work for
the State of Florida, or its school system, or one of many counties, cities, or
special districts like a water management district, you should send a note of
thanks to Senator Jack Latvala. Why?
Because he stopped both the Speaker of the Florida House, Will
Weatherford, and Senate President, Don Gaetz, (and the puppeteers at the Florida
Chamber of Commerce) from ending the pension programs now offered to public
workers by these organizations. It takes
courage and a strong belief in what’s right to buck the current power structure
and do what he did for you, and he should be thanked.
In short,
Weatherford wanted to dismantle the state’s defined benefit program of which
you are likely a current member in favor of having you gamble that the stock
market will provide a retirement stipend for you. They’re view is that if the private sector
employees do it this way, why not public employees? Here’s what’s wrong with that idea:
- Private employees always have the potential to generate
substantial personal wealth. They
can self employ, they can become real estate magnates, they can become
used car sales giants, they can sell stocks and bonds. But the public employee will never
become wealthy through public service.
Their pay will always be at the bottom tier and they will never be
able to build a nest egg substantial enough to support themselves after
they can no longer work. Their commitment is to public service not themselves. It is only fitting that after a career
of what amounts to personal sacrifice, in return, the public might provide
them with a reasonable, defined pension when they retire and can no longer
serve.
- Suggesting that the average public employee will be sophisticated
enough to be able to grow a pitiful monthly investment in the stock market
to any size is a ruse and a fraud.
It simply will not happen. The
complexities of stock and bond investing are legendary and many investor
geniuses have lost fortunes trying to make it work for them. It is also unrealistic to think that such
small investment amounts would ever amount enough in size to generate dividends
adequate to live on. If invested
conservatively, this would most certainly be the case, and if invested in
high risk arenas, it would likely just be lost entirely.
- The only true reason the Tallahassee manipulators want
public employees investing in the stock market is because, collectively, it
would generate a huge windfall of other people’s money from which the stock
and bond brokers and similar Wall Street shysters could suck fees. As it stands
now, the retirement funds of public workers are managed by professional
money managers who spend their working lives growing and protecting huge pension
fund amounts. They negotiate that
protection and growth from positions of strength and professional training
as managers of billions of dollars, not $50 a month.
- The Weatherford people in Tallahassee would also have you believe that the current retirement program could bankrupt the state. The kernel of truth in this claim is so small that the real truth is that it’s a lie. Studies have consistently shown that the Florida Retirement System is one of the most well managed and healthy public retirement systems in the country and that the only way it could fail is if 86% of all state employees were to retire at the same time. It would have to be a kind of “zombie apocalypse,” as described by Senator Darren Soto (D-Orlando), and simply too remote to be even theoretically possible.
What ultimately happened
in Tallahassee is that Weatherly couldn’t get enough support for the bill from
his House and Gaetz couldn’t get much from the Senate either, even though Senator
Wilton Simpson tried to water it down to make it less objectionable. The last try was a legislative maneuver by
Gaetz that would have brought the proposal to the Senate floor were it not for the
good Senator, Jack Latvala, who objected and pointed out that it would be a
breach of Senate rules. That’s where it
died. Thanks, Senator.
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