You hit the nail on the head. There are all kinds of perks corporatists give themselves. IIRC, in the late 90’s (?), my father was telling me about the new tax laws that affected if say a company had a private (company) yacht or such that only the executives were privy to use, they were to make access to the yacht available to anyone in the company in order to not personally pay taxes for the asset as part of the executive pay. (That sentence was garbled, but hopefully understandable). So, the executives solution was to decide that it was a “company” asset, but that anyone who chose to use it, had to pay a pro rata amount of the property taxes while they used it, meaning they may have to pay a few thousand dollars for the day or whatever the cost was, thereby eliminating the ability of the “lesser” employees’ access to the property. The lesser paid employees could not afford the pro rata property tax, but the executives could, allowing them to keep the perks they gave themselves.
Essentially they loopholed the loophole.
“And all this while the public sector thrives on big salaries and benefits not enjoyed in the private sector.”
Truer words have never been spoken. I’m in favor of eliminating at least 9/10 public sector jobs, and creating a “term limits” of sorts on them. In my opinion (and I know it’s probably an unpopular one), there should be NO lifetime government job of any type. And I don’t think there should be ANY retirement or pension system of ANY kind to ANY government employee. Give them their wage and let them decide how they wish to prepare for their future.
There should be no looming pension crises, and unbalanced budgets, because someone was promised something down the line in the name of political expediency.