MindPilot (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Sat Mar-05-11 12:09 PM
Original message
This idea that benefits are a "handout" or somehow "free"....
seems to be gaining a lot more momentum than a thought that stupid ever should.
"Teachers should have to contribute more toward their retirement." or "why should I pay for some snowplow driver's health care? I pay for my own." Or some such nonsense; I'm hearing comments like that all the time and here is the explanation I generally hand out.
Benefits are part of your pay. You are payed wages and benefits; the aggregate of the two is the currency for which you are exchanging your labor.
Benefits are not some hunks of unicorn shit falling from a rainbow. The teacher, the snowplow driver, and everybody else who works for a paycheck has earned their benefits just as they have earned their wages. And as such they are entitled to those benefits, which is why they are called "entitlements". So stop saying that like it was a bad thing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x564698Yet you have no problem taking from others who have earned their pay and handing it over to the govt.
The govt then takes part of that money and hands it to someone who has to do nothing but fill out a few forms to get that money. The person who gets that money probably also gets free healthcare which is also paid from the money taken from others.
Tax dollars are not hunks of unicorn shit falling from a rainbow. They come from people who work hard for that money only to have it taken so someone else can have it.
So excuse the hell out of the taxpayer for expecting govt workers to do what we have to do and contribute to our own benefits. We pay for our health insurance and our pensions. If that is good enough for us it sure as hell is good enough for govt employees. The rest of us have our belts so tightened that we can't even breathe so it's about time govt workers start to feel some of the pain imposed on the rest of us by the same govt that employs these people.
