One of the frequent responses I receive to my criticisms of excessive public employee pensions and expanding unfunded pension liabilities comes from (no surprise) well-pensioned government employees who tell me that I am simply "jealous" about what they have and what I don't have. Even many liberals I talk to -- at least those who work in the private sector -- agree that the imbalance is too severe. Perhaps this is jealousy, but I like to think of it as indignation at an unfair situation.
Those of us in the private sector have adopted new attitudes about retirement. Few of us have gold-plated retirement packages, so we realize that we will need to work until we drop over, or at least as long as we can do so. We have scaled-back expectations.Why shouldn't public employees, who are supposed to work for us, do some of their own soul searching and rethinking?
North points to a depressing and mind-numbingly boring study by the Employee Benefits Research Institute, which shows that most of us would need to defer retirement to at least 84 to be able to live comfortably on our savings, which is rather funny given that at that point we're all living on borrowed time. Only in the government sector can most people plan on retiring comfortably -- and they can do so at exceedingly young ages.
Government employees need to learn what the rest of us have learned, to adopt the "Never Say Retire" attitude, or at least recognize that there's no longer a gravy train that will allow them to retire in their 50s with millionaires' retirement packages. This is change we call should believe in.
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