Everything else in the debate is BS (perhaps the Oscar for BS could go to these geniuses who claim that taxpayers don't pay for the compensation of public sector workers).
So it doesn't matter if you can find a study saying public employees are over or under paid or have higher or lower benefits. It doesn't matter if you compare apples to apples or apples to hedgehogs. It doesn't matter if the unfunded pension liabilities are mostly structural or cyclical.
This is just straight up political payback. I wonder what the public sector union bosses expected would happen if the Republicans ever figured out what was going on and got hold of enough political power to do something about it?
6 comments:
Wow, well said...
Did you tap my phone line?
Let's keep the public sector unions so that no one can claim that they are not receiving fair and equal treatment under the law. And yes, they may be viewed as an arm of the democrat party, but what group doesn't have party loyalties, if not such close economic ties as these? Let us insteat turn to reforms in the system which allow union demands to be accepted when they exceed the value to the work provided. Let us set their contracts to expire shortly after elections, and place their demands, and government's counter offers, on the ballot for a binding referendum. This takes bargaining for the public's (taxpayers') interest out of the hands on the elected officials, no matter who paid theri campaign bills. And if those officials didn't bargain hard enough, or offered sweetheart deals as theri counter offer, well, their names will be on the ballot too. Power to the people ! ALL the people.
It must be the tooth fairy who is depositing money in the state union workers' retirement accounts. And all along, I thought the money was coming from the taxpayers. Silly me.
Notwithstanding the other fulminating in this post, the object of criticism has been the canard that workers are not paying for enough of their health care or somesuch, the point being that of course all labor costs are defrayed by the taxpayers but the money paid for fringes is received by workers no less than money wages, so what is really at stake is simply whether total compensation is or is not cut. In other words, for the slow, it is not a question of workers not paying for something, it is one of paying them less by forcing them to shift some money wages to fringes, while the gov spends less directly on fringes.
I'm glad I could clear this up.
@rotwang: nope it is a power issue.
Btw: is it hard to get a date with that handle?
@Anonymous Of course the level of compensation is a power issue. You might call it class struggle. To frame it as "public employees don't pay enough for their benefits" is just dumb.
Don't use Rotwang to get dates. My dating handle is Long John Silver.
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