> In cases where they don't receive it though, they're not paying into it either.

If the "it" you're referring to is social security, this is, to use your phrase from above, "patently untrue." It would be comforting if that were the case, but there are cases where a person who has paid into social security will not receive anything from it, and will not receive their spouse's Social Security survivor's benefits, under WEP and GPO rules. As I explained above, I know one of these people and help her manage her money.

To the original point in my grandparent post: just having to do the math on this stuff could be deterrent to someone trying to make a decision about whether teaching is a smart career move.

> Maybe the union membership by in large doesn't want to?

WEP and GPO are a matter of federal law, although "maybe the unions want this thing that is obviously hostile to their members" is certainly... a thought a person could have. As it happens the American Federation of Teachers is lobbying to eliminate WEP and GPO, and I assume there are other unions who are acting similarly:

https://www.aft.org/resolution/repeal-windfall-elimination-p...

https://sports.yahoo.com/congressional-bill-may-soon-end-194...

(some potential disinformation in the second link, but the point is, this is a pretty active debate)

edit: It occurs to me that maybe you meant "maybe they do not want to pay into Social Security," which is probably true. To keep this in perspective, these teacher pensions which were considered an alternative/supplement to Social Security are a lot older than the WEP and GPO, which came along to kick those with these pensions in the nuts in the late seventies and early eighties. The teachers and their unions were already committed to the path they were on when the federal government changed the rules on them.

Not disagreeing with what you just wrote above,but do you have a source for

> If the "it" you're referring to is social security, this is, to use your phrase from above, "patently untrue."

? Because everything I am reading suggests those states whose teachers whose work years only go to pension and not SS eligibility are not having their teachers pay into SS.

That part is right! The problem comes at the end of a career when the SSA needs, under the WPA rules, to weigh what the teacher in question is going to be paid by the teacher’s pension (which by design was paid into instead of social security) against what the teacher paid into social security via payroll taxes before or after their career as a teacher, or during summer work during their career as a teacher. The SSA then reduce the social security benefits according to their formula. The reduction can be pretty extreme, all the way towards a person who paid into the social security trust not receiving any benefit from it.

I’m not fully familiar with the stated justification for these laws, or why you’d want to treat a pension as a ”windfall,” (or maybe they’re trying to keep social security benefits from being a “windfall?”) but I guess my main thought on that as a non-teaching, non-union professional is that we are all very lucky these rules were drafted a year or two before 401ks came into wide use, such that we avoided someone in congress getting the bright idea of treating our tax deferred retirement savings as a “windfall” to be factored into the SSA’s payment calculations as well.

I believe the problem of losing a spouse’s survivor’s benefits happens under the GPO rules, and that is similarly unpopular.

I just wanted to thank for persistently conveying this.

I have family who were teachers in CA and lost all of the SS benefits they paid into.

It is a terrible injustice. So much so that whenever I bring it up, people simply refuse to believe it is true.