My wife and I have both worked all our lives. For most of our teaching careers, we earned relatively low pay (my first teaching job paid about $11,000 a year). Still, as we both hung in there, we now have a decent combined pension through the Teachers Retirement System. We would be among the folks paying a serious amount on a progressive pension tax. I also have 20 years of Social Security payments in my work history. I will get almost nothing for it because of my TRS pension. Teachers have always paid a much higher percentage to TRS than most people pay into Social Security. All that being said, I still am in favor of a progressive tax on pensions.