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Really? Your posts are laced with passive aggressive insults to anyone who disagrees with you, which leads to the "BL: ToughShit" response and you get all butt hurt when someone replies...really? Grow a pair of stones. You want to have a debate, fine with me, but your bias serves comes out as sanctimonious elitism. There are huge fiscal issues facing this country and of course no one wants to have their ox gored. A litmus test to determine levels of military retirement based on your type of service....really that is what you have? While the military retirement system is expensive, it is not the problem. From a military budget point of view, the issue is acquisition costs, (O and M for USAF), and Tricare. Spend all the brain-bytes you want fixing those programs but the real issues are the social entitlement programs. Medicare (it will break us), Medicaid, and Social Security (now in the red while leveraging a non-existent trust fund).

BL: I don't like you. You serve no other purpose than to validate retroactive birth control.

So under one theoretical option, you rely more on individual contributions and give the greatest long-term benefits to those who have given the most to the service. If you take the personal responsibility to save your own money and sacrifice the most, you will benefit the most; if you sit on your ass you benefit less. The other option is one where everyone wins equally, and the government begins giving out "retirement" benefits immediately to people as young as 38. Which one of those sounds like a liberal, big-government, status quo option? Guess all those people who wanted to reform the system, stop wasteful spending, and introduce market-based solutions to big government programs were really full of crap. The system as it stands now is great for us and I look forward to hopefully benefiting from it some day, but is it really the best, fairest, most efficient system that puts money in the hands of those who deserve it most? That's a legit question. It doesn't seem like they called for any changes in the timing of tricare benefits.

Um, yes, it should be based on something quantifiable if we're saying that retirement in the military is based on having "earned" it when compared to other federal workers. If we're not saying that, then I'm not sure our desk jockeys should be getting more than the desk jockeys at State, Justice, FBI, etc. Using AFSCs is an easy, broad-brush stroke way to do it and that's why there are retention bonuses for certain jobs and not others; we do this all the time with special pays and retention bonuses, yet when I try to apply it to retirement pay it's suddenly controversial and divisive because not everyone will get to "win" to the same degree after punching the clock for 20 years... I'm not saying "I have all the answers, elect me emperor-for-life," I'm saying that this is a good conversation to have so that if/when changes comes we have a plan to pull off the shelf that is to our benefit. I don't think you're picking on me...I really don't even think we completely disagree based on your views on turning desk jobs into GS positions. If no one in the military proposes these kinds of changes, then the starting point of the conversation will be based on what someone else cooks up, is that a better solution? If no one is willing to even think up bold, controversial new ideas about how to make our system better then what's the point? Pay that gives greater benefits to those who have "earned" them by undertaking hazardous duties that are essential to military operations. Why not incentivise retirement benefits in the same way that we do regular pay? If you fly and are deployed in combat, you earn more than the guy who doesn't when on active duty, but once you retire his "earned" benefits are the same as yours?? That does not compute.

Ugh...can we leave the conspiracy theories for people wearing tin-foil hats? The reason your internet skillz have failed you is because this particular proposal on military pensions is from the Domenici-Rivlin "Restoring America's Future" plan, as commissioned by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a bipartisan think tank. Read an op-ed authored by Domenici and Rivlin in the Washington Post here, and a story from military.com specifically about proposed changes to military retirement and tricare here. Overall, their plan marries up closely to what was proposed by the 2008 Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, proposals that were entirely ignored by Congress. This is not a conspiracy...this as well as the President's debt commission (Simpson-Bowles) are attempts at bipartisan brainstorming at how to help reduce our national debt. Will these proposals pass Congress, we'll see but considering both sides have identified things in each proposal that are red lines for them I'm not holding my breath. Ok mr employee, I'm game. Is suggesting that people with truly dangerous careers should receive more benefits (i.e. they have "earned" more by actually being away from their families, being shot at, injured, etc.) than those sitting desk jobs so crazy? Ok, sounds good to me. I never claimed to be working the "hardest" job or the most "dangerous" job, but does flying in combat zones and frequently deploying sound harder and more dangerous than working the MPF? Yes. Does spending 15+ months at some sh*tty FOB getting shot at and seeing your buddies get killed sound harder and more dangerous than my job? Yes again. So...I'm not really sure what you're insinuating. I'm gonna assume you're a pilot and you have deployed several times since 9/11, is that fair? I'd say you've probably earned benefits similar to me and most of the guys on here, so I'm confused as to why the stereotypical "shoe clerk" (my Amn Joeblow from before) should earn as many retirement benefits under a revised retirement system. In my view, they should not if the reason we're giving such a generous retirement plan to military personnel is because they have "earned" it. If that's the case let's make it more generous for the people actually busting their ass and less so for people wondering how long they can sit in the food court of the BX before they have to get back to their cubicle. See post by Chicken. I honestly wasn't full-up on what Congressional pensions are based on, but I would have guessed it'd be similar to other civilian federal workers. That seems to be true based on what Chicken says so there ya go. Look it up yourself and if it seems unfair write your congressman/senators and next election only vote for candidates who support reducing congressional pensions if it's that important to you. I love on these emotional issues it's fine to cut stuff as long as it doesn't affect you directly. For that reason, you won't see Congress voting themselves less money or retirement benefits because if you allowed members of the military to vote for their own pay and benefits, do you think we would lower them as some great gesture to a nation straddled with unmanageable debt? Hellz no. Luckily for us Congress is ~535 members large, so their retirement benefits really have no effect on the deficit. And honestly neither do military pensions either so really, don't sweat it because this issue is not only political poison for anyone who even mentions potential reform, but it's also a drop in the bucket if we're really trying to lower the deficit. Arg...for all the calls to "Read the bill!!" it seems like no one actually did. If you can find in the bill where healthcare was supposed to be free I'll buy ya a beer. Name me a government program that's truly "free" and I'll call you an idiot. We pay taxes to support social security and medicare and every other government program out there. And "Obamacare" isn't really a government-run program anyways, it's a requirement that you buy private-market health insurance and a set of guidelines on what those programs need to include at minimum. If this were a single-payer system, yes, you'd be getting healthcare from the government...kinda like you do now under tricare. Unfortunately IMHO, that kind of system isn't sustainable on a grand scale unless you raise taxes in the short term to pay for the initial costs and it would have totally re-made the employer-based system we have now which insurance companies would not have been happy about. Ahh...whatever, this is completely off topic... To the point pawnman was trying to make, IDK if you would be immediately eligible for tricare if we changed the system as Domenici-Rivlin propose. The military.com article I linked to above highlights the plan's proposals WRT raising fees for tricare to cover more costs (i.e. when tricare started member fees paid for 27% of the program, now it's down to 11% b/c we haven't raised fees once since 1995). Honestly, it probably wouldn't matter much deficit-wise to allow retirees to keep tricare upon getting out a @ 20 years b/c the majority of people aged ~38 are not costing a lot for healthcare. Healthcare costs for old people is what's gonna bite us in the ass.

What is essentially a reserve retirement for a full active duty ration of BS? No thanks.

So wait, now you want to engage on the issues? Or do you still want to "retroactively abort" me? I'm confused... If you don't like my tone, then point taken, but throwing bombs is not the way to correct that. I might sound like a snarky asshole sometimes but based on the usual tone here on BO.net I didn't think that was outside the ops limits for discussion. I agree with everything you wrote here. This issue won't be touched because it's won't really solve the deficit meaningfully, and can't be backed politically. The only reason we're debating this is because the OP linked the army times story about this particular aspect of the Domenici-Rivlin plan. This isn't some pet issue of mine, I can't wait to get my 50% pay if/when I make it to 20. Hell, it's not something that's even gonna change, but, the story was posted and since outside groups are looking at this for ways to save money, I think it's smart to have a discussion among ourselves about what possible alternate systems might be acceptable WRT costs, retention, etc. If those in the military don't have an acceptable counter-proposal to whatever is being brewed up in think tanks and debt commissions, then we'll definitely be forced to bend over and take whatever is coming down the pike. Based on attitudes expressed here, apparently any changes, or even talk of changes, will cause the world to end and/or everyone to seek out guard positions; at least we know where we stand I guess. My idea was based on this premise: We're supposedly saying military retirement (or "retention") benefits are based on having been earned. Logically then, if we all get the same benefits in retirement assuming same rank and TOS, then we have all earned them equally. Really? Some 11B ground-pounder shooting it out in Iraq/Afghanistan has "earned" the same amount of retirement benefits as a desk jockey who's primary job is virtually identical to some GS civilian? We don't get paid equally while on active duty (flight pay, HFP, family sep, etc.), so why the feel-good, everyone's the same attitude once we hit 20 years?