A NJ Pundit Does His Job

Speaking truth to power - and it's a rare and beautiful thing from the increasingly shrill Bob Braun:

Jeffrey Keefe, professor at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, offers a perspective. The private sector has few winners and many losers — many people losing jobs, a few making a killing, especially in the financial sector. The middle class is squeezed, unemployed or underemployed, pensions and benefits gone, unions driven out.

Except for the public sector. "They didn’t suffer from the growing gap in incomes. Their jobs kept them in the middle class — and now they’re seen as coddled,’’ says Keefe. Along come politicians driving a wedge between the dwindling private sector middle class and the public sector — and cops and firefighters and teachers become enemies. The reason for the taxes.

But if increased taxes in New Jersey are the cause of the state’s economic woes, what will be the effect of increased charges to public employees?

"What you saw happen will have the exact same effect as a tax increase, but aimed at the working- and middle-class residents,’’ says Keefe. He just released a study showing the costs of "reform" will fall hardest on public workers with the lowest salaries, many African-American.

"It’s going to withdraw purchasing power from the New Jersey economy — an economy already dead last in creating jobs. A half a million people taking a pay cut, that’s money that won’t be spent on goods and services.’’ [emphasis mine]

But, but, but... GOLD-PLATED BENEFITS!

Someday people are going to realize how badly they've been scammed. But by then, it will probably be too late to do anything about it...