In fact, that was my Plan A, but they changed the rules on me when I wasn’t looking.

All Florida County employees are under the Florida Retirement System. City employees have their own plans, a different one for each city.

Half-pay after 30 years? I think that’s more than fair. The benefits increase with seniority, which is as it should be. You can make a lot more money in private industry than you can working for municipal government, but the benefits are iffy and there is no security. The only reason anyone would work for the County, (all else being equal) is because of the benefits and the “security”.

I was ready to stay in my job, or at least stay in as long as possible on account of the shaky state of the economy, but they were pulling my agency out from County administration and I had no guarantees that I could stay in the FRS pension program, or even that my benefits already earned would still be honored. I don’t know if this was done deliberately to get people like me to leave, or if it really was a result of internecine rivalry as my boss claimed. I wasn’t about to wait around and find out.

And since I had no guarantee I would even have a job after the re-org, or how much it would pay if I did, I decided to make my move while I was still officially a County employee and cash in my chips, both pension plan and unused vaction/sick leave.

I determined I was better off with the bird in the hand, and I retired early, even though I would have rather not done it that way if I had the choice. I might get less, but I’d get it for longer. Hey, I don’t make the rules. That’s the hand I was dealt. Anyone else would have played it the same way.

Today, I’m glad I did. But I was only able to do it because of my age. People a few years younger than myself had no choice but to stick around and see what happened. As it turned out, they kept the FRS pensions but I had no way of knowing that. And a lot of my colleagues lost their jobs, and the rest took pay cuts.

I had excellent pension plans at Gulf, TRW, and GTE, but the nature of the high tech industry made us all job gypsies and I never spent long enough anywhere to build one up properly.

I did accumulate a very nice pile of savings when I worked in Silicon Valley, (I was planning to retire at 55 at the rate my investments were growing) but my 15 month layoff burned through half of it and convinced me private enterprise couldn’t deliver the long term security I was counting on. For a man in his 40s, and knowing what I knew at the time about the fundamental, structural weaknesses in the American economy and what was likely to happen in my remaining working life, I wasn’t about to trust my future to the hope the 90s boom would last forever. It lasted longer than I expected, but it did crash eventually, as we all know.

I chose instead to get a safe government job while that was still possible, and bought my first house, doubling up on payments to pay it off early. You see, regardless of how you think the society and the economy ought to be, you have to plan your life according to how you perceive it to be. It helps if you’re lucky, as well.

While none of those are any real problem, they do indicate a mindset. There is a combination of traits in people who routinely do those things which can lead to folks getting into trouble. And that mindset is what bit her.

I was making the general observation that no matter how many safeguards an engineer–or a society–wraps around the human factor, some people will still manage to fall through the cracks.

I don’t know how you would arrange a “society” that would guarantee your friend a real job. I don’t know enough about her. I don’t know why her “personality” would be an issue. I do know that the unemployment rate in her field is a bit over 5 percent, and before the crash it was around 3.

In a better economy she would be working. She is not a “sufficiently determined fool”, as someone described some people in her position, less so anyway than Goldman, Sachs or any of the rest the government bailed out.

And as with many, many people the bottom fell out from under her. It would be nice to be in a society where she could find a job. I suspect there is a lot she could do. She’s quite independent, and takes on interesting building projects she completes very well.

Thanks for the comprehensive overview of the situation. It is illuminating.

I’m a retiree under the State Retirement System, and I could not live on my $1700 a month from that source of income alone. But some of my neighbors live on their Social Security alone, which is roughly in the same league. I have no idea how they do it. Many of these are widows, shut-ins, lonely and scared people who are out of touch with the modern world and who are easily swayed by smooth-talking confidence men and unscrupulous marketeers trained and equipped to sell to them.

Strictly speaking, these guys are not necessarily criminals, (although there are a lot of those, too) but they do sell products and services like insurance, religious counseling, medical products, home maintenance, and other items of questionable value. Their marketing is targeted at these little old ladies and other easy marks, people with real problems and little income, but who still may have a bit of a stash squirreled away and are terrified of the water leak in their plumbing, or that stain spreading on their ceiling. Neighborhoods like this in Florida are like waterholes for predators on the Serengeti. The lions get them on land, the crocs attack from the water, and vultures are always in the air.

The stories you hear are enough to turn you into a cynic (can’t you tell by my posts?). The Homeowner’s Association and the local Sheriff do a great job of banning these shysters with “no soliciting” signs and ordinances, but the sharks pay little attention to them, or have their work-arounds. Like telemarketers, they are always conducting “surveys”, or partnering up with legit merchants like Cable TV providers who have a right to come in and inspect and install.

It really demolishes your faith in human beings; not so much the gangsters, there have always been those, but the guys “just trying to earn an honest buck”, They are the worst, because they don’t even realize they are criminals.

Might be fun to have some volunteers, maybe teenagers, follow the land sharks around the neighborhood and knock on the door a few minutes after the sharks leave. Have a kindly informative discussion with the potential victim. Leave pamphlets with warnings on phone and internet scams, along with a phone number if the resident has questions on a particular sales pitch.

Counteradvertising is as much “free market” as advertising is.

I run this function for some of my extended family, being kind of the “Snopes” for things they hear or read.

TV evangelists come to mind, but they aren’t the only ones. Stealing from and conning the helpless is a big industry in this country. I see a lot of it in my retirememt neighborhood. These victims can’t be blamed for just being too stupid for their own good. Their predators are too clever at devising elaborate schemes to trap them. They know exactly what they are doing. I consider it the moral equivalent of selling hard drugs to children.

Technically they are legal, No one puts a gun to their victim’s heads and makes them fall for these scams. But I’d love to put a gun to theirs for taking advantage of people that way.