If you're like us, you’ll scrimp to make ends meet and do without some things you would like to have, so long as you know the taxes you pay are making it possible for a favored few to live well at your expense.
Wait a minute. You do mind that. In fact, you hate it. It offends your sense of justice. It infuriates.
Hardly a day goes by without another example being thrown in our faces of some special person who's managed to do real well for himself while sticking us with the tab.
Today it's David Werner, former chancellor of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
We'll probably work well into our eighties, perhaps keel over at our desks and never enjoy even a modest pension, but David retired at the age of 62 and gets $252,704 in benefits every year for doing nothing – thanks to the taxpayer-subsidized State Universities Retirement System. He's already collected two and a half million dollars and will break five million in his early eighties.
When we say taxpayer-subsidized, we mean taxpayer-subsidized – to the tune of 95 percent. David paid next to nothing into his retirement plan. We pay almost all of it. David, in fact, paid less into his retirement plan than he gets back in a single year. Pretty sweet deal!
Still, knowing that David has been well-provided for and has it made makes it all worthwhile for the rest of us, right? No, it makes our blood boil.
It's not because we're envious or resentful. David can have his deal - even a sweeter one – provided he pays for it himself.
Why do we have to finance this guy's retirement, who does he think he is, and what kind of gall does a person have to have to participate in such a taxpayer swindle?