NPR's Planet Money: How Much Is A Firefighter Worth?

[BEorP]

If you have 20 minutes to spare, you might find this NPR podcast interesting: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/12/18/167265874/episode-424-how-much-is-a-firefighter-worth

It is one of the first times I have heard any journalist-type actually understand that things don't burn like they used to...

[Resqmedic]

Wow, that is a great article, well worth listening to. And the following comments were also worth browsing. It is indeed a looming problem, it's hard to justify a huge percentage of a fire department's budget to pay for people that don't work there anymore. Sadly in a great many cases this stems from the cities not properly funding their pensions in the first place, or borrowing from the fund hoping that tomorrow would never come. It is difficult to defend a pension system where people make almost twice the amount in retirement that the people currently working pay.

My fire department has a pension system, it's a private system so the city can't raid it for their needs, but that being said, I currently pay 23.9% of my gross wage into it. Guys who retired just 10 years ago were paying only 0%-2%, and my annual pay raise for the past 5 years has been 1% or less. And I won't even bring into how much Obamacare has cut into my finances, pension systems are really great when the economy is consistently expanding. However these days it seems to be musical chairs, the last guy standing is going to be left out in the cold.

[paramedicmike]

It's well worth listening to if you haven't already. It is a 20 minute story but listening to it didn't seem to take 20 minutes. They did a good job at keeping it moving.