To the editor:

The Missouri Public School Retirement System is not a “Ponzi scheme.”

To this date, no funds from current employee contributions have been used to pay any retired member’s pension. The so-called district match is a classification of employees’ deferred compensation, which goes to the employee’s account as an amount that the employee may not withdraw from the system even if the employee withdraws from the system.

There are no Mehlville School District accounts at PSRS or Mr. Taxpayer accounts, only school district employee accounts made up of employee compensation either from current gross earnings or deferred earnings. This feature of contributions makes the PSRS a retirement system as opposed to an investment bank.

If all of an employee’s funds were available and could be withdrawn the day before retirement, the system would fail and we might as well all rely on Social Security. The fact that PSRS is better than most private pension plans is not an indictment of PSRS. The fact that many private enterprise pension systems fail their employees should not mean that we should ensure that no one has a successful system.

The basic premise behind Call Editor Mike Anthony’s and Mehlville school board member Rich Franz’s opinion of PSRS is that teachers are paid more than they are worth and that teachers are over compensated. They want to reduce teacher compensation by eliminating some of their retirement contributions. The results would be that teachers would work more years and receive less retirement, thus failing to be an example for the population they are charged with educating.

Outcome one: Teachers work more years, resulting in fewer job openings for the younger, less-costly teachers, leading to higher unemployment and higher costs for districts. Outcome two: Smaller monthly retirement amounts so that teachers now must rely on the public welfare to supplement their low pension payments.

Taxpayers need to realize that teacher retirement produces independent seniors who rely on their own compensation achieved from their own labor. Perhaps you think that these two outcomes are not possible. Unfortunately, I am old enough to have seen both.

In an effort to leave no editor or school board member behind I would be glad to enlighten them.

Wayne Muehlenbeck

Oakville

Editor’s note: Mr. Muehlenbeck is a retired assistant superintendent for the Windsor School District.