There’s been discussion about President Obama’s speech in Iowa as it relates to public sector employees who have a retirement plan generally considered to be better than that of the average public sector employee. The comments most under discussion is this quote:
I do say, though, to my friends in the public sector unions that it is important that you are on the side of reform where reform is needed. Because the truth of the matter is, is that at a time when everybody is belt-tightening, there is nothing wrong with a union saying to itself, you know what, we know budgets are hard right now. Let’s sit down and say we’re willing to negotiate so that we’re making some sacrifices to maintain the number of teachers in the classroom and keep class sizes at a reasonable level. We’re willing to make some modifications in terms of how our pension systems work so that they’re sustainable for the next generation of teachers as long as it’s a conversation, as opposed to it simply being imposed and collective bargaining rights being stripped away.
So I think it’s important -- remember we talked about shared sacrifice and burden sharing. Well, this is an area where there’s got to be burden sharing as well. If a public sector employee is able to retire at 55 with 80 percent of their wages, and the average public sector employee has got a 401(k) that they’ve just seen decline by about 20 percent and they have no idea how they’re going to retire, and they’re feeling burdened by a lot of taxes and they don’t feel like the public sector employers are making any adjustments whatsoever to reflect the tough economic realities that are facing folks who are not protected, then there’s going to be a natural backlash.
For background see two excellent diaries Obama discusses unions at Iowa Townhall and Obama and Public Pensions: What He Seems to Be Forgetting
This diary is an expansion of a comment I made in the second diary linked to above by kissfan.
My comment in the diary by kissfan was as follows:
The President here is pitting one public employee against another, very consciously in my opinion. And as always, the effort never seems to be geared in how to raise the retirement security of all, but rather how to bring retirement insecurity to parity.
Since the very beginning of the conflicts in Wisconsin, I have been struck by how the efforts of the media and those fighting the unions and wanting to dissolve their contracts focus on the fact that “they have it too good”. In other words:
They have a deal the rest of us should envy. They have a deal the rest of us should resent. They have a deal that the rest of us should try to take away from them.
This is the "natural backlash" the President refers to. My major problem is that is is not a natural backlash, it is an artificial backlash.
These union members are not the only ones this argument is being deployed against. This is exactly the same thing that is happening in discussions regarding military retirement pay. See this diary for background.
President Obama, members of the media and all of the austerity mongers are trying to mobilize popular anger at unionized employees and military pensioners based on trumping up class warfare between members of the same class.
In all of these instances as well as others, the President and others are essentially saying:
“Look at them! They have it better than most serfs! Aren’t you mad that they aren’t as screwed as you?”
This is like someone saying to one group of peasants who each has one goat, “Hey! Those peasants over there have 2 goats each. Why do you let them have two goats when you have only 1? ” all the while hoping we forget the fact that the person raising the issue has herds of goats and gets money from people who have even more goats and in fact own almost all the goats in the world.
This is the "shared sacrifice" the goat hoarders speak of as they lead off the reclaimed animals to join their own herds.
Is there any hope of Americans wising up to these tactics? Instead of allowing ourselves into being manipulated into seizing our neighbors goats, how about if we take some from the herds of the super rich austerity pushers, which would be where the "natural backlash" should fall naturally. What if we all decide that not only is 2 goats not "too good", for the likes of us, it is NOT ENOUGH! How about Living Wages, Single Payer Healthcare, Retirement with Dignity – 3 Goats for Everyone!
Or will we continue to allow ourselves to be manipulated by those who constantly scheme to make the lowest common denominator go even lower at the behest of the truly insatiably greedy who literally WANT IT ALL?