cce

Many people took positions in government when it wasn't anywhere near a high-paying job. I know an engineer friend who took a job with the government in 1994 for a 40% pay difference (45k vs 75k) -- how the lower wage was justified: (a) more job security, (b) an actual pension plan with ~28 years service. The two were viewed at that time as being equivalent: with the government compensation a bit less than working for a contracting firm. I know of teachers who choose their profession, not based on the yearly compensation, but based on the idea that "yea, so after 26 years of letting children beat down on me, I can retire and not have to worry so much". I'm sure police/firemen who agree to risk their life every day for 20-some odd years make similar calculations. It's a rational choice -- and a promise of compensation made.

I simply don't understand how anyone could justify retroactive gutting of plans. Can we do retroactive taxation on those that went without the pension as part of their compensation plan?

Elimination of pension going forward -- perhaps. I'm curious to see how recruitment of these positions works... likely, the Government won't be able to attract as good candidates as it might otherwise.

There is a type-system (and graph) encoding for JSON called JSYNC (http://jsync.org) which is compatible with YAML's model.

Corporations are not Immortal. They are not living beings. They do not have free will. By calling a company immortal one further pollutes the dialog.

They are a logical / legal construction, and it makes no sense to call them mortal or immortal. By calling them immortal you are implicitly inferring that they actually make decisions and have actions; they don't. Agents of the company work within the constructs of the law on behalf of the company's directors. The company's directorship management makes the decisions.

I think that she mentioned 'bad debt' -- this is typically a reference to consumer-level debt, often at 15-26% interest. Assuming 20% usury, the interest payments alone are $500/month, or 20% of her disposable income assuming she's lucky enough to have a assistant professor post (45-60k) -- adjunct professors make far less. Likely she also has another 20-60k in 'good debt' as educational loans at a more reasonable 8-12% interest.