The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division

[okaawhatever]

5. A couple of things. First it's the easiest way to get rid of the government debt. The other way is

to increase corporate taxes back to their former levels. See how that works? Corporate income tax is currently only 9% of revenue collected. In the past, say before Reagan and maybe even Carter, it was closer to 30%. The easiest, and maybe only way, to keep corporate taxes artificially low, is to reduce services the government provides.
Another reason is public workers wouldn't have the benefit of retirement and would perhaps look at private companies since the two would be in direct competition. I think most would agree that a government worker makes less in salary, but the difference is made up in job stability, benefits and retirement. Those three things provide competition to private or publicly traded companies.
Another reason is that large state pension funds (the self-managed ones) are competitors on Wall Street. They're large enough share holders in many corporations to stop bad appointments to boards of directors and similar behavior that benefits only investment firms.