Remember how the politicians solemnly explained to us we couldn’t prevent Wall St. bonuses in the wake of the bailout “because a contract is a contract”?
They meant to say “except if you’re a government worker and we promised you a pension.” Clear now?
Oh, and by the way: Are we seeing any politicians clamoring to cut into their own retirement largesse?
(steam) Oh, yes — let’s be civil while these contracts are broken.
The part I love about this coming “class war” is that the MSM will act as if it’s taking the side of the “have nots” by insisting government pensions be gutted. When, in fact, the true “have not” position should be to ask why don’t all Americans get decent retirement pensions like they used to? The answer is because the rich would rather syphon all the money instead of sharing it.
* Full disclosure – I’m a government employee. If they cut my pension, I’m going to be damned pissed. As an attorney, I make several hundred thousand dollars less a year than my colleagues who stayed at my big firm (and, yes, I could’ve stayed). In fact, I make about what a first-year associate makes at my old firm. I’m fine with that. I make good money and have an interesting job that means something to me. But part of the deal was retirement. Take that away and it becomes awful tempting to just go for the money.
With one hand they want to cut back Social Security and with the other they want to destroy government pensions. It’s sounding like someone is really serious about raising everyone’s retirement age to 70.