the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Please read this Bloomberg News article
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-24/migration-s-biggest-loser-is-connecticut-as-florida-profits
As the wealthy leave New Jersey for states with much lower tax burdens, it will be our middle class and the working poor who will make up the difference in higher property tax bills. New Jerseyans already pay the highest property taxes in the country, not to mention we pay among the highest income and corporate taxes as well. Even millennials can’t afford to live here anymore.
For those who think the out-migration from New Jersey isn’t happening, the stats in the Bloomberg article are quite staggering and may be irreversible. Why would someone want to pay 12% or 10% of their income in taxes versus Pennsylvania at 3% or Florida at 0%?
This is exactly why I’ve put together a comprehensive plan to reform New Jersey government across the board — from saving billions on public employee healthcare costs to a whole host of other reforms that will make New Jersey more affordable.
Get the facts. Please read my plan here https://pathtoprogressnj.org/ and share it on social media.
Look, if I and I would guess you, retired NJ with a public pension I would not be a pig for leaving for Florida. It would be a practical decision. Expensive in NJ. Cold snowy weather in winter.
Now, if had owned a business in NJ where I had cheated people or been on Wall St. or a banker who had cheated people with bad lending practices etc. then I would be a pig and should be in jail. Get it? You probably don’t.
For the record I am not an NJ pension recipient. Nor is any relative of mine.
Wait.
What?
.
I thought if they changed the laws to raise taxes those greedy, evil, rich people will just blindly pay.
Problems solved.
That’s what they said.
.
I don’t understand.
Very confused.
.
Well there he is Boss Hog ? making up lies as he goes.
Here are Boss Hogs ? lies…..
1) No one retires from public employment at age 50
2) public employees pensions are NOT tax free, they are taxed by the federal government and some states.
3) PFRS retirees collect their pension from an average age of 58 not 52. Public employees in the PERS can’t retire with their maximum pension until AFTER age 55 or 60.
Hey Boss Hog ? just because you don’t know how to do math doesn’t mean that the math doesn’t work! ??????
for 36-38 years versus only 25 years of actually making pension contributions… the math doesn’t work. ??????
To the person who said
Look, if I and I would guess you, retired NJ with a public pension I would not be a pig for leaving for Florida. It would be a practical decision. Expensive in NJ. Cold snowy weather in winter.
BRAVO ? you nailed it. You described Boss Hog ???? perfectly.
Oink oink piggies. Have fun not paying NJ state taxes in Florida. Sooooey!
Strange this blog gives a discredited former Fire captain a voice… he cost the Village millions by harassing his own employee. He sent threatening letters to the same employee and created his own blog to spread misinformation. Just like he tries to do on this blog. I thought his wife locked him up and that he was heavily medicated?!?
To the public permission liar above, here are the facts:
https://www.nj.com/politics/2018/07/credit_rating_agency_says_new_police_fire_pension.html
Hey Boss Hog ??,
Have fun paying taxes in New Jersey to support the pensions of the smart people who retired and left New Jersey.
???????????
Taken from your link Taxed to Death……
The police and firefighter unions had feared lawmakers might someday pool assets to shore up those ailing funds and have disagreed with the state’s investment strategy, namely its push into high-cost hedge funds.
The portion funded by counties and municipalities, which are required to make full contributions annually, is 73.1 percent funded, according to the state’s statutory funding data. The smaller portion funded by the state, which has skipped or shorted contributions for more than two decades, is 41.8 percent funded.
Sounds like the State Pension System is the Problem not the Counties or Municipalities.
I am calling you a LIAR now?
The public pensioner above is providing misinformation…. again:
Special Retirement for Police & Fire
This type of retirement is available to PFRS members *at any age* who have 25 years or more of service credit in the PFRS.
For Tier 1 and Tier 2 members, the annual benefit is equal to 65% of your Final Compensation, plus one percent for each year of service over 25 years but not to exceed 30 years. The maximum allowance is therefore 70% of your Final Compensation.
For Tier 3 members, the annual benefit is equal to 60% of your Final Compensation plus one percent for each year of service over 25 years but not to exceed 30 years. The maximum allowance is therefore 65% of your Final Compensation.
According to page 43 of this report of the PFRS actuary (link below), the average age of all healthy retirees starting on their full pensions as of July 1st, 2017 was as follows for special retirees after 25 years of service at 70% of their final salaries (over 90% of all current retirees):
Police Special 52.2 yrs for $63,956
Firemen Special 54.1 Yrs for $65,655
https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/OPI/Reports_to_the_Legislature/PFRS_actuarial_2017.pdf
Look who is the piggy now bullying & harassing discredited former Fire Captain!???
Nice try Boss Hog ?,
Ha Ha Ha wrong again! Sad that you have to resort to lies when you are called out and proven a pathological lier. But I guess that’s all you can do.
We both know you stole money from your clients and get fired because you couldn’t do your job. How much money have you stolen all these years? Did you steal enough to retire so you could spend all day lying on this blog ….
??????????
Those funding numbers are based on aggressive assumptions for returns (7.5% versus the 6.5% assumed by private trusts), and aggressive assumptions on mortality. Average Americans reaching 65 years old now live to their late 80s, not the early 80s assumed in the PFRS pension assumptions… math is wrong!
Somebody put Bombastic back on his lithium
73% funded is not a good number
To the person who said, The public pensioner above is providing misinformation…. again:
I specifically said PERS( NOT PFRS) can’t retire with their maximum pension until AFTER age 55 or 60. Try comprehending what you read.
Service retirement Available to Tier 1 and Tier 2 members upon reaching age 60 or older; or to Tier 3 and Tier 4 members upon reaching age 62 or older; or to Tier 5 members upon reaching age 65. No minimum amount of pension service credit is required. The formula to calculate the maximum annual pension allowance for Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 is:
Years of Service X Final Average = Maximum 55 Salary Annual Allowance
The formula to calculate the maximum annual pension allowance for Tier 4 and Tier 5 is:
Years of Service X Final Average = Maximum 60 Salary Annual Allowance
Source: Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund (TPAF)
https://www.nj.gov/treasury/pensions/documents/factsheets/fact04.pdf
So Boss Hog you were lying when you said
“The public pension pigs are also leaving for Florida to collect their excessive pension benefits from age 50……”
Its actually Police Special 52.2 yrs for $63,956 & Firemen Special 54.1 Yrs for $65,655
Thanks for clearing that up Boss Hog.
Man/woman works in NYC. They move to Ridgewood for the ‘whole package’ (let’s leave the school rank out of it for a sec). They have 5 kids, all go to RPS schools K-12. Worker contributes to 401k, 403b, SEP IRA, whatever, and has a possible cash flow from these investments of 5k/month. Last kid graduates RHS and the family decides to move to Florida or another lower tax state. Are they greedy, or being financially prudent? Same goes for government employees. It’s just a desirable financial move. NJ pols (R & D alike) have screwed over the system to fix budgets, cronyism, over-spending, and going on a fiscal bender for decades. I lived here when there was no income tax (thank you Gov Byrne) and the sales tax was 3%. The pension system is broken and the culprits have since split the scene: Byrne, Kean, Florio, Whitman, DiFrancesco, Mc Greevy, Codey, Corzine, Christie. Now, we’re stuck with Murphy who believes that he can tax us out of the problems. With a democrat senate and assembly, it’s his baby now and can ram through as many tax bills as he wants. We have the prerogative to leave.
Excellent Comment, Bravo you hit the nail right on the head.
Man/woman works in NYC. They move to Ridgewood for the ‘whole package’ (let’s leave the school rank out of it for a sec). They have 5 kids, all go to RPS schools K-12. Worker contributes to 401k, 403b, SEP IRA, whatever, and has a possible cash flow from these investments of 5k/month.
Not if they had Boss Hog Kime ?managing their 401k, 403b, SEP or IRAs. Boss Hog ? Kime would steal from their retirement savings with outrageous fees, commissions, charges that you will never know about and he will never tell you about. He’s a thief plain and simple.
Once again Boss Hog Kime ? doesn’t understand or know the difference between the State Pensions ( which are seriously underfunded) and the county and municipal pension systems (which are minimally underfunded). He wants you to believe that they are all one in the same and they are all going to bankrupt the state, which is a outright lie.
Below is a link to the NJ Pension website. It shows the 7 State Pension plans which have a total funding of just 54.4%.
And it also shows the Local (County & Municipal) 2 Pension plans which have a funding of 71.9%.
https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/documents/financial/gasb/statutory-summary-chart-2018.pdf
Don’t let lying Boss ? Hog ? Kime fool you. The only pension plan that’s going to bankrupt the state is the State funded pension plans. The local pension plans ( PFRS & PERS) are not going to bankrupt anything.
Those are the facts. He’s just trying to scare people and he’s jealous of police and firefighters benefits and pensions.
Bring it on. That is if you can ever figure out who I am.
Just can’t handle the truth can you Boss Hog. ?
Most of these comments Are all bullshit. The bottom line is no one gave two shits about us years ago. Now all of a sudden they care about us please give me a break. No one wanted these jobs years ago. You hypocrites. No one’s going after the politicians from the past 20 years. Do you add Whitman taking money from the pension to use for construction. We had Corzine taken money from the pension investing it on Wall Street and losing big money. Christie’s a ministration taking money from the bank and using it for the mall in the meadowlands. What about that. Wake up people. And some of your facts are on the police and fire Pension system. Get your facts in order
Solution: bust up the union leaches. !!!!
Kime, I knew I had seen or read that name before but I couldn’t remember when. Turns out it was right here on the Ridgewood Blog He’s a corny of Aronsohn, Gwen and Puch,
He was on that Financial Advisory Committee.
https://theridgewoodblog.net/reader-asks-is-the-ridgewood-financial-advisory-committee-nothing-more-than-a-group-to-promote-the-mayors-agenda/
I’m sure blaming Police Officers and Firefighters for what Whitman, McGreevey, Corzine, Christie and Murphy did by taking money out of the PFRS pension systems and hiring high priced pension fund managers who failed to earn more then the actual broader market and invested in risky investments that never paid off will be a winning argument when the state files for bankruptcy in 2027. The money will surely just grow on trees.
You Wall Street thieves and other Financial executives are paid way to much for what you do. And the outrageous Bonuses you get are nothing less than obscene. All if you guys need a 50% reduction in pay and NO Bonuses.
Thanks to you greedy Financial Sector Executives and Wall Street thieves we experience a collapse of the US economy in 2008 and my taxes and the taxes of all Americans had to be used to bail you all out. The gravy train is over. Time for you guys to tighten your belts.
Wall Street and financial people get paid for performance.
You either produce or your out on the street.
The economic collapse was due to The policies of democrats that required banks to lend to those (their constituents) who could never pay back their mortgages.
Try getting your facts straight
As for public sector union employees they get overpaid, automatic raises, overly generous pensions and medical benefit .
All they have to do is eat, breathe, and take a shit.
That’s why NJ is broke. Owned lock and stock by the democrats who are the puppets of the unions.
Wall Street and financial people get paid for performance. You either produce or your out on the street.
That’s a outright LIE. Wall Street and financial people rip off the public with excessive fees, commissions and hidden charges.
The economic collapse was due to The policies of democrats that required banks to lend to those (their constituents) who could never pay back their mortgages.
Isn’t that interesting, you blame the politicians for the collapse that you greedy people in the financial sector caused, but you don’t blame the politicians who stole money from employees pensions and you blame the public employees. What a hypocrite you are.
Try getting your facts straight
Pension Fund Managers, Bankers, Brokers, Hedge Fund managers, Mutual fund Managers are all overpaid They charge outrageous fees, get overly generous bonuses. A worker deposits money into their retirement account and you automatically take a percentage of what that person added to their retirement account as a fee. That’s money for nothing. But that my friend is going to end. Eventually anyone managing a retirement account, ANY type of retirement account will be held the fiduciary standard. Then we will see all of the thief’s leave the retirement account management business.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/retirement-gamble/how-retirement-fees-cost-you/
Wall Street and financial people get paid for performance. You either produce or your out on the street.
Oh really now, according to this study your statement is a lie…….no one produces every year, year after year.
https://us.spindices.com/documents/research/research-fleeting-alpha-evidence-from-the-spiva-and-persistence-scorecards.pdf
Fleeting Alpha: Evidence From the SPIVA and Persistence Scorecards
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
One of the key measurements of successful active management is a manager’s ability to deliver consistent positive excess returns over a given period, on a net-of-fees basis.
We study whether a group of funds that outperform their benchmarks in one period can subsequently persist in delivering alpha in consecutive periods.
We measure this by tracking a group of funds that outperform the benchmark on a rolling quarterly basis, based on annualized returns over the past three-year period. We then examine whether these outperforming funds (the “winners”) can continue to outperform during each of the three subsequent one-year periods.
With the exception of large-cap value managers, the data show negligible performance persistence across most domestic equity categories beyond a one-year horizon.
The data indicate the difficulty market participants face in finding a skillful manager that can offer consistent alpha on a near- to mediumterm basis. Therefore, market participants may not be best served by picking managers based solely on past performance.
For example, out of 1,034 large-cap funds that existed in the universe as of Sept. 30, 2013, only 19.73%, or 204 funds, outperformed the S&P 500®. In the following year, 15.69% of those 204 funds outperformed the benchmark. By the end of the third year, none of those original 204 funds were able to outperform the S&P 500 on a consecutive basis (see Exhibit 1).
CONCLUSION
The findings in this report are not surprising, given that the Persistence Scorecard already highlights the small probability of a top quartile fund maintaining its status repeatedly over three- and five-year horizons. Taken together, the data indicate the difficulty market participants face in finding a skillful manager that can offer consistent alpha on a near- to medium-term basis. Therefore, market participants may not be best served by chasing hot hands or picking managers based solely on past performance.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/active-fund-managers-rarely-beat-their-benchmarks-year-after-year.html
Stock-Picking Fund Managers Are Even Worse Than We Thought At Beating the Market
Rather than hiring a stock picker to run your investment portfolio, you’re probably better off just investing in market indexes.
That advice has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years, especially as those indexes (at least in the U.S.) have reaped big gains in a bull market that’s now entering its ninth year. But data released this week underscores the idea even more forcefully.
More than six in 10 actively managed stock funds were outperformed by their market benchmarks in 2016, according to the S&P Indices Versus Active funds scorecard. Large-cap funds failed to keep up with the S&P 500 66% of the time, while mid- and small-cap funds were outperformed by their benchmarks 89.3% and 85.5% of the time, respectively.
As bad as those numbers are, they only get worse over longer timelines. The overwhelming majority of all domestic funds were outperformed by their benchmarks over 1-, 3-, 5-, 10-, and 15-year intervals that ended December 2016.
https://fortune.com/2017/04/13/stock-indexes-beat-mutual-funds/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/03/17/do-any-mutual-funds-ever-beat-the-market-hardly/?utm_term=.7d91231cfd21
…….costly mutual funds that aren’t doing any better than the stock market overall. In fact, research shows that the number of active mutual funds outperforming the market on a consistent basis isn’t just low, it’s zero.
Just two funds — the Hodges Small Cap fund and the AMG SouthernSun Small Cap fund — managed to hold on to their berths in the top quarter every year for five years running. And for the 2,862 funds as a whole, that record is even a little worse than you would have expected from random chance alone.
In other words, if all of the managers of the 2,862 funds hadn’t bothered to try to pick stocks at all — if they had merely flipped coins — they would, as a group, probably have produced better numbers.
You said, and I quote…..
“Wall Street and financial people get paid for performance. You either produce or your out on the street.”
I not only proved that statement wrong, (and a LIE) I also proved its nearly impossible for a person to beat the broader market trying to pick stocks in a retirement account or a mutual fund. So much for your ..”You either produce or your out on the street.” statement.
Of course you try to ignore the fact that you have just been exposed as a liar and you attempt the old “nothing to see here, look over there” by reverting back to your canned response about N.J. pensions.
And you still haven’t figured out that the local Pension Systems aren’t going to bankrupt New Jersey, it’s the State Run Pension system that will bankrupt New Jersey. Your either not intelligent enough to recognize and see the difference or you just have an agenda and that fact doesn’t fit with your wacky narrative.
If you don’t like what a money manager is paid, then invest for yourself
If your money manager doesn’t produce get another one.
Your living in Lala land with fixed benefit pensions irrespective of market conditions .
You speak like a typical Union lackey with zero concept of how the world works.
The democrats made banks lend to their constituents as though it was some god given right to own a home. When they couldn’t pay, the collapse happened.
Face the facts .
Even by your own rosy assessment, your pension plan is only 73% funded. More like 50%
Yup that’s right. That is due to the outrageous fees paid to greedy pension fund managers. If pension fund managers were paid what they were actually worth the pension funds would be funded at over 100% today. Those overpaid fund managers are the reason NJ taxpayers are paying so much in taxes to sure up the various State Pension Funds that have been mismanaged and looted by the pension fund managers.
Under Chris Christie, the New Jersey pension system paid more than $600 million in fees to financial firms in 2014 — 50 percent more than a year ago, and a higher rate than almost any other state reports paying for pension management. The figures are buried within an otherwise routine annual report that appeared to change the way the fees were counted to make them look smaller than they actually are.
https://www.ibtimes.com/chris-christie-administration-paid-600m-financial-fees-2014-1833872
This is one of the many reasons why the pension funds are underfunded, greedy pension fund managers. NEW JERSEY PAID A HIGHER RATE TO PENSION MANAGERS THAN ANY OTHER STATE. You complain about high taxes but ignore a big reason your taxes are so high. Overpaid Pension Managers. Hmmm could it be that you benefit by those outrageous fees?
If you don’t like what a Police Officer or a firefighter earns or their retirement benefits get yourself elected and try to change it.
If you think you are paying to much in property taxes move.
Your living off the backs of hard working people and you win by charging fees, commissions and hidden costs no matter how the market performs.
You speak like a typical Elite I’m better then the unwashed common people You have no ability of critical thinking beyond your obvious greed
Stop blaming the democrats for the greed of the financial sector. As one of the many taxpayers that had no choice and were forced by the government to bail your asses out I’d prefer you just say thank you.
actually the sale of AIG assets bailed everyone’s “asses” out
Name one, just one Ridgewood employee who as you claim below received
“…..the huge checks (+$750,000 per person in Ridgewood alone) you hogs get for unused sick leave at retirement”
Let me help you out , don’t waste your time trying to find someone who got a check for $750,000.00. Why do I say that, simple, because that is a LIE!
STOP LYING FOR A CHANGE!
Looks like your overpaid fund managers handily beat their index over the past five years.
A blind monkey throwing darts at a list of stocks could have made money over the last 5 years due to the major increase in the stock markets from 2015 to today. Particularly the NASDAQ ( up 74%) which outperformed the DOW (up 45%) and the S&P 500 (up 42%)
Even the worst fund managers can beat their low artificial benchmarks in the market conditions we have had over the last 5 years.