Exposing the Agenda to Fleece Billions from Workers' Retirement Savings

By David Sirota and Matt Taibbi

October 11, 2013  |  Since the once-great city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, Americans everywhere are in a panic. Is my city next? Is my state facing financial disaster? From Wisconsin's controversial Gov. Scott Walker [2] to New Jersey's Chris Christie [3], politicians all over seem to be telling us the answer is yes. The fiscal end is nigh, these leaders say, if America doesn't act soon to slay one of the last great budgetary dragons held over from the entitlement age: our allegedly outmoded, unsustainably expensive system of state and municipal pensions.

 

In the new fable, state and municipal workers are presented as the welfare queens of our age, historical anachronisms living fat and happy in the competition-free panacea of public service, and shamelessly living off the tax dollars generated entirely by the innovation of America's true workforce - its go-getting private-sector employees, who long ago stopped expecting their bosses to give them real health and retirement plans.