Since We're So Concerned With Disparity...

In yesterday's Spokesman Review, the editorial board published an opinion piece that rehashed the USA Today column from last week and says the federal government needs to do something, i.e., reduce, pay for its workers. Why? Because it's only fair.

The reason for the widening gap in pensions and health care coverage is that the private sector has aggressively cut those benefits. Many private companies have eliminated or reduced traditional defined benefit plans for retirees. Government continues to take on future pensioners. On the whole, private companies have asked their workers to pick up more of their health care costs.

As a result, we have private workers whose pay has stagnated and whose benefits have been slashed supporting public employees who aren’t feeling commensurate pain. The government cannot mandate raises for the private sector, but it can look at the widening disparity and the overall federal budget mess and do more of its own cutting.

Public employees are not feeling commensurate pain. Apparently we should even things out. Well if the Review editors are going to go all communist and everything shouldn't they also recommend that we even out CEO pay as well? After all, if companies can't afford to compensate their workers as before and yet are able to overcompensate their CEOs with millions even when they get fired then it's quite likely they're not feeling commensurate pain either.