I recently came across this AP headline:
“Anger Brews over Government Workers’ Benefits”
There are a number of reasons that drive the resentment discussed in the article. One is the stagnation of working class wages over recent decades. For tens of millions of our citizens, the American Dream has become precisely that: a fantasy. Another cause of the ill-feeling is the replacement of predictable private sector pensions with highly uncertain 401(k) accounts. Only government employees now enjoy the modicum of retirement security enjoyed by earlier generations of American private sector workers. (The article reveals that the average state employee pension in New Jersey totals the princely sum of $30,000.)
The article is essentially about American workers who have been screwed complaining that other American workers should be screwed, too. Such is the contemporary definition of social justice.
Reading the piece, I couldn’t help but recall the words of 19th century tycoon Jay Gould:
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Nowadays it seems they’ll do it for free.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.