Sunday, September 21, 2008

I've been working on the railroad...

but I wouldn't be if I worked for the Long Island Railroad, where you can retire with a pension at age 50, and then file a disability claim for the job you just quit, secure in the knowledge that your claim will then be considered by the Railroad Retirement Board which "almost never says no to a disability claim". They even get free golf somehow! Perhaps not surprisingly given this strange convolution of perverse incentives, last year 94% of LIRR employees that retired after age 50 received disability benefits (again, on TOP of their retirement benefits).

As the NY Times puts it "The L.I.R.R.’s disability rate suggests it is one of the nation’s most dangerous places to work. Yet in four of the last five years, the railroad has won national awards for improving worker safety."

HA!

This truly is a great country


2 comments:

Speedmaster said...

Wow, maddening! ;-(

Anonymous said...

How do you justify the tenure you partakov?