"Of course, the dirty little secret is that consumer spending would literally collapse once the public sector is unable to spend all of their current earnings with the fallback of lifetime pension earnings and benefits. Haven't seen this side effect mentioned once, anywhere." that is what every public union and their members would like you to believe. if you believe that argument then it is the patriotic duty of every private sector worker to dig deeper into his pocket to support the public worker and to keep the economy afloat. with that kind of reasoning the US will never get out of its economic mess.