People who don't understand why government workers should have good pay and decent benefits in tough times are asking the wrong question - and the press has largely accepted the framing coming from the right on this.
A better question is, why can't everyone else have what unionized government workers still have? Right now the stock market is booming and the major corporations are flush with money - yet all we hear is the need for sacrifice. What's wrong with this picture? They tell us employment will pick up when spending picks up - but how is that supposed to happen when the owners of the private sector continue to slash pay and benefits? Times may be tough - but not for everyone. Yet who is being asked to give up still more?
The reason why conservatives target government employees is because they do jobs that can't be shipped overseas for private profit, and more importantly, because they are the ones who can make government work for everyone - if given the resources. Want to destroy government? Demonize its workforce - and keep giving the rich tax welfare.
Anyone who doesn't realize there is a class war in America isn't paying attention. We no longer create jobs or make things in this country because the financial powers that be have decided it's easier and faster to strip mine the little remaining wealth from the vast majority of Americans into the hands of the few. Government union jobs are one of the last places they can go after - that and Social Security.
The same people who have been destroying the middle class for decades are now going after one of the last places where ordinary workers can still have some say over their fate. This is the latest chapter in the race to the bottom Republicans have been taking us to since Ronald Reagan. They're no longer 'growing the pie' - they're fighting over who can get the biggest slice
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