This is a letter I had published in our local paper here in Wisconsin:
It is said that you can leave the top off a bucket of crabs because if one crab tries to climb to freedom, the other crabs will pull it back into the bucket. I am reminded of the crabs whenever someone claims that State and other government employee benefits and pensions are too generous. They are not. Rather, benefits for the rest of us are too low.
In the private sector there has been a move away from company funded pensions and health insurance towards a system where employees bear the brunt of the costs for their retirement and their health care. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Before any of you write to say that companies can’t afford the costs of higher benefits remember that corporate profits have never been higher. Salaries for top executives have never been higher. Wealth and income concentration in the top one percent of wage earners has lead to disparities between the super wealthy and the middle class that have never been higher. Companies are offering the average worker smaller benefits so that the companies can pay their top management higher salaries and bonuses. In other words, lower benefits are not the result of any “law” of economics. Lower benefits are the result of deliberate choices made by American corporations on who gets the profits. We could make different choices in America if we wanted to.
So, if we are all in the low pension and benefits bucket because of choices made in corporate board rooms, how should we react? Obviously, Republicans want us to act like crabs, dragging down anyone who might have negotiated a bit of economic freedom. Every time someone says that government workers have “Cadillac benefits” they are clawing at their neighbor, trying to hold everyone down at the same low level. The question isn’t why government workers have decent benefits. The question is why the rest of us don’t. Stand up for good benefits for everyone, not just the super wealthy. Don’t let Republicans treat you like a crab in a bucket.