Teachers and government employees always ask for more money, claiming that they cannot attract good employees because entry salaries are too low. Putting aside the argument that government employees exchange, in some areas, somewhat lower salaries than their private industry counterparts for a pension and other benefits, the amount of money government employees have taken from private citizens is vast.
Benn Steil, Director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, provided recent numbers on how much private citizens have given California's state government (Wall Street Journal, March 2008):
The Public Employees' Retirement System has 259 billion dollars in assets.
The State Teachers' Retirement System has 169 billion dollars in assets.
Even so, these entities are underfunded in future obligations/payments, meaning that they will most likely put initiatives on future ballots asking for more funds/taxes from private citizens.
"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost
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