How many fallacies can you find in this Facebook post by a firefighter in a small Colorado town?

I’m a public employee. I am NOT the problem. The rich who created this crisis are putting middle class families against each other. Teachers, police officers, paramedics, firefighters, road workers etc. are NOT the enemy. If you’re jealous of our benefits, FIGHT FOR YOUR OWN, not against ours! We live here, pay taxes, work hard & try ……to support our families too.

Here’s my tally:

1. I assume that “this crisis” is the Great Recession, which has led to reductions in tax revenues, thus pushing some governments into the red. Well the Great Recession wasn’t created by “the rich.” It followed from the housing bubble, which was created by the Fed’s loose-money policy and lax mortgage-lending policies pushed by Democrat politicians and their pet agencies: Fannie & Freddie. Moreover, as far as “this crisis” has made it harder for governments to pay their bills, it is because (in part) they have had open-handed policies toward the compensation of government employees.

2. “The rich” aren’t pitting families against each other. Public employees are doing it by their greedy insistence on being paid above-market compensation at the expense of other workers.

3. “Teachers, police officers,” etc. ARE the enemy of taxpayers because they are able to extract above-market compensation from taxpayers with the help of politicians who are, in fact, counting on those teachers, etc., for votes.

4. Jealousy is not the issue. The issue is that teachers, etc., are extracting above-market compensation from taxpayers at the point of a gun, that is, through the government-run system of tax, spend, and elect. In other words, theft is the issue.

5. Public employees aren’t the only ones who work hard to support their families. Taxpayers also work hard to support their families — and to support public employees and their families.