Watchdog.org Podcast

Breaking the Bank is Watchdog.org’s weekly look at the national public pension crisis, how it’s affecting state and city budgets and what can be done — if anything — to fix it. In this week’s episode, hosts Eric Boehm and Steve Greenhut take a step back from the usual number-crunching and budget-busting to ask a sociological question: are America's highly-paid public sector workers a new form of royalty? Okay, they're not going to be wearing crowns anytime soon, but there's a noticeable and growing class divide between government employees and everyone else. It's a situation that has been worsened by the public pension system, which taxpayers must pay into but don't get much in return.