2. The Assault on Public Employees
The second front of the overall Republican battle plan is being played out on the state level where public employees are being blamed for state budget crises. But unions didn't cause these budget crises -- state revenues dropped because of the Great Recession. Yet underhanded Republicans view these crises as opportunities to gut public employee unions, starting with teachers' unions.
In Republican unison, Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker and his GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union rights for teachers. Ohio's Republican governor John Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey's Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, "I'm attacking the leadership of the union because they're greedy, and they're selfish and they're self-interested." But whose billions are backing these efforts and why?
The demonizing of public employees is not only based on the lie that they've caused these budget crises, but it's also based on a second lie: that public employees earn more than private-sector workers. In fact they don't, if you take account of their respective amounts of education. In fact, over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers, including teachers, has dropped relative to private-sector employees of the same educational achievement -- even when including health and retirement benefits. Moreover, most public employees don't have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of merely $19,000 a year.
Bargaining rights for public employees are not what's causing state deficits to explode! And here's the proof: several states that deny their employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over 30% of spending. Meanwhile, many states that do give employees bargaining rights -- Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana -- have small deficits (of less than 10%).
The point is that Republicans would much rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds -- many of whom would not have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout. Also keep in mind that most of their lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Recession/Depression with which we're still not finished.
Last year, America's top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains -- at a relatively tiny 15% -- due to a tax loophole that sold-out Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded for their chief benefactors and campaign contributors.
Keep in mind, however, that if the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, just like yours and mine, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. And whose services are more valuable to our society -- that of thirteen hedge-fund managers or that of 300,000 teachers?!
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