The issue with EconProf isn’t public employees and benefits.
The issue is criticizing public employees and benefits when you worked in the public sector, retire early to start a second career and then collect about $15K/year for the rest of your life from those exact benefit programs.
I’ve already said, I don’t care that much. If not for Wall Street, EconProf’s $15K/year would be affordable to the state of CA. I support our educational system, and overall, I think it’s worth the cost. On this note, I was interested in EconProf’s experiences and insights as SDSU adjunct faculty and found his comments interesting.
At this point, I’m okay to leave the hypocrisy thing alone. EconProf can sift through the gap between his viewpoints and his actions. They are the definition of hypocrisy, but alas, human beings are complicated and filled with contradictions.
For what it’s worth, EconProf (of 2011) is right. The accounts of the State of California are out of balance and he may, as many others are in the process of finding out, end up having to forego those benefits involuntarily.
By orders of magnitude, the root cause of this whole problem is not average public sector employees (and their corrupt unions), but Wall Street and the financial industry.
