The explanation for generous and inflated public-sector pay

In his Saturday letter, Charles Parrish misses the mark by blaming the allegedly greedy nature of business owners for why government pay outpaces the private sector.

Because business owners can survive only if customers voluntarily purchase their product, they face a level of cost restraint unlike anything found in government — which is, of course, funded by taxation.

And because state law grants coercive, monopolistic powers to local government unions, elected officials are actually rewarded for spending excessively on government pay — as they bear none of that cost themselves, while reaping the support of the unions and the political power that confers.

Arguing that business owners should pay more to match ever-rising government pay overlooks precisely what makes such inflated pay possible in the first place: the ability to foist those costs onto captive taxpayers.

So while it has become fashionable to attack business owners and the private sector as greedy, it is worth remembering that it is ultimately their tax dollars that make such generous pay packages for government workers possible.