CALLS for reductions to public-pension plans have generated a lot of heat over the past few days. Republicans say overly generous public-employee pension promises are largely to blame for state budget deficits, and that states should cut benefits before asking for federal help. Jon Cohn sums up the liberal response:

To what extent is the problem that the retirement benefits for unionized public sector workers have become too generous? And to what extent is the problem that retirement benefits for everybody else have become too stingy? I would suggest it's more the latter than the former.

The fact is that local and state governments have promised a lot more than they can deliver financially, in part because people love public services but hate to pay the taxes for them. In the short term, then, budget cuts are probably inevitable... In the long term, though, it seems like we should be looking for ways to make sure that all workers have a decent living and a stable retirement, rather than taking away the security that some, albeit too few, have already.

Kevin Drum agrees that the campaign against public pensions is essentially a strategy of class warfare, an attempt to turn working-class voters against each other. And he notes that the most egregious benefit plans are largely those for police, firefighters, prison guards, and other security workers, not for teachers or social workers. (One might add that California's teacher pension fund got into trouble not so much by raising benefits as by agreeing to let the state cut taxpayer contributions, relying on over-optimistic investment earnings projections.) Still, as Matthew Yglesias writes, the fact is that states don't have the money to pay for their promised pensions, and either taxpayers or state employees will have to sacrifice to balance the ledger.

But it's also noteworthy that one of the most generous defined-benefits public-employee pension plans in the country isn't being mentioned in this discussion. There is a branch of the federal government that lets you retire after 20 years on the job, even if you're under age 40, and guarantees immediate benefits of 50% of your final salary for the rest of your life. That branch is the military. If you joined the army at age 18, and retired in 2011 at age 38 as a $55,000-a-year sergeant (pay grade E-8) after an unexceptional career, you would be entitled to $26,000 per year for the rest of your life, plus cost-of-living adjustments. The average 40-ish retiring sergeant would put the taxpayers on the hook for over $1m in lifetime retirement pay. That's not counting a lifetime of free medical care from the VA. And the military doesn't have a pension fund; the Pentagon budget's $18 billion in retiree pay this year will be paid directly by taxpayers.

How does that stack up against overgenerous state employee pension plans? Let's take those California teachers. You can't start teaching at 18, since you generally need a masters degree. But if you got your MA, started teaching at 24, and retired after 20 years on the job, you would get...nothing. California teachers aren't eligible for retirement benefits under age 50, and between 50 and 55, you need at least 30 years' teaching equivalent on the job. So, say you were a late bloomer, started teaching at 35, and retired 20 years later at 55. An average teacher in Los Angeles with 20 years' experience would probably be earning around $86,000 a year. Taking early retirement at 55, you'd get a retirement benefit of $25,000 a year—less than that 38-year-old sergeant. And you'd have to buy your health insurance out of that.

This is not to suggest that we should slash military pensions. The military is one of America's few remaining avenues of income mobility for lower-class youth. And one reason we're not talking about slashing military pensions is that we don't have to; the federal government, unlike California's, can still cheaply borrow the money it needs to keep paying its retired employees whatever it has promised to pay them. But when budget deficits lead to calls to slash teachers' retirement pay, with no corresponding interest in slashing soldiers' far more generous retirement pay, what we're saying as a nation is that we value our soldiers much more than we value our teachers. That's a value structure that I don't share.