A kind reader emailed an updated link to this article along with a cached version from Google.

fyi - the 5.8 percent pension contribution is 5.8% of gross income, but that amount is then deducted from net income. So it is a larger percentage of NET income. Also, fyi, my understanding is the amount of money that has gone into the retirement fund is deferred compensation, so all employees affected by this are now paying 100+% into their retirement accounts. (See article - http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/25/the-wisconsin-lie-exposed-taxpayers-actually-contribute-nothing-to-public-employee-pensions/)

The WSJ article is incomplete as is the comparison of numbers - don't make any attempt to compare like professions. They certainly did not look at changes in working conditions, etc., as a starting point and put dollars to that. And, they say absolutely nothing about executive pay, bonuses on Wall Street and in fortune 500 companies, which dwarf any of the amounts from WI workers - public or private.

Teachers are taxpayers, and teachers are consumers in the economy as are all public and private workers. Shame on us workers for putting done at one another - how foolish and short-sighted we are.

Not only was Walker's administration sloppy with his falsely named budget repair bill, he did not need to resort to a "nuclear" option to get changes started. He did not even try to make his case clearly and succinctly. And, he rather made it about pitting WI citizens against one another rather than bringing us all into the boat in a sense of the need for shared austerity as David Brooks wrote about (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/opinion/22brooks.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), but that would require leadership and some kind of analysis.