Paying promised pensions is only fair

At age 68, I retired from a community college with a pension of $30,000 per year. Many writers of letters to your editor would feel that this is way too much - that in the name of "equity" it should be reduced at least to poverty level, if not more.

Some will not be satisfied until I am on food stamps, apparently because, as a public employee, I deserve nothing better, but also because I should be made to suffer as they do.

Now, I sympathize sincerely with those who must subsist on Social Security, whose payouts are ridiculously low due in large part to the fact that Congress has illegally "borrowed" huge amounts from the Trust Fund and left piles of IOUs there instead. I also sympathize with those who must subsist on 401(k) accounts since this money gravitates into the hands of Wall Street bankers, who gamble with it until it disappears.

I can even recognize that many (though not all) cannot afford to pay the increased taxes necessary to fund state pension obligations. But two wrongs don't make a right.

I was promised my pension, and I will fight for it. I will also fight to improve conditions faced by private sector retirees, who are grossly exploited and cheated. I will press for financial re-regulation to bring Wall Street gamblers back under control. And when Congressional irresponsibility drains the Social Security fund, I will pay the increased taxes necessary to rescue it. Fair is fair.

Anthony Nelson

Rolling Meadows