The public sector employees also sacrifice annual wages that a similar education and skill set, and often doing the same exact work, would earn them in private industry.

It's only in the current environment of reduced wages and retirement benefits that has been increasingly imposed on private industry over the last thirty years, generally absent union organization, that the relatively static public sector *appears* to be a better deal.

Perspective: The problem is far less about public employees having a "benefit" than it is about private sector employees getting far less than they should.

I hardly think that it's a decent defense of public employee benefits to say that private sector employees are just underpaid.

And anyway, even if that is a legitimate point, what do you do with it? Say that we should just keep the unsustainable pensions and benefits (it's the benefits that are costing our state more, as a matter of fact) and wait for the private sector to catch up? Or mandate that private companies pay everyone better?

That would be like the US simply demanding that poor countries stop being so poor and get with the program.

Or mandate support and encourage that private companies pay everyone better?

OK. That works for me.

John: If more private sector employees were getting the wages and benefits they both need and deserve including retirement plans (of any sort) that far, far too many have not the first notion of...

OOPS. That would require that the business owners get up off their profits and up off their cash reserves and actually (re)invest in their cash cows.

It is past the time to do so.

Jay, the $210-million you mention was the monthly payment to retirees and beneficiaries, not the annual amount.

Doh. Thanks Mike. JH

Jay,

The taxpayers urge you to remind State employees that their entire compensation and benefit package is funded by the poor taxpayers, most of whom have been struggling for decades. The concept of a lifetime defined benefit pension is something our grandparents used to tell us about when we were little kids before grandma and grandpa dropped dead at 60.

I happy that some perspective is finally being injected into this topic on this blog. State employees (or any public employees for that matter) contribute significantly to their pensions and as the chart in the previous post noted, most benefits are modest.

Two additional points. First, the last time i checked the overwhelming majority of public employees (state, county or muni) were tax payers as well and their taxes also contribute to their salaries. Second, when will folks recognize that the bulk of public employees who retire use their pension just to survive. They use these funds to make mortgage payments, buy food, clothes, gasoline,etc . These are the basics that keep our economy running and keeps retired workers from becoming wards of the state.