Pointing out that overspending on public-employee benefits leads to fiscal instability does not mean that public employees are bad people or that they deserve to fall on hard times; it's just observing a simple truth.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think it's unrealistic for public-sector employees to believe that they are immune from modifications to their pay and benefit packages.
What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.
Economically, long-term joblessness means fewer dollars for consumption. For deficit control, it means fewer taxpayers contributing to government revenues and tens of billions more spent on unemployment insurance.
Fiscal discipline can turn the economy around.
We have major fiscal problems on our hand.
Well, a deficit reflects an imbalance between spending and revenue, and so narrowing it requires acting on one, the other or both.
The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.
An indictment of entitlements has to focus on the huge 'social wealth' that the welfare state creates at the stroke of the pen. Yet statistical tests of the effects of welfare spending on employment yield erratic results.
Aside from the poor example it sets, the federal government enables reckless spending on public-employee pensions by offering hope of assistance from Washington if things get bad enough.
Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.