Not to edge into Andrew’s territory in the Great Pension Debate, but a point that a town resident — with whom I often agree on local matters — made when the Tiverton Town Council voted to support “meaningful state-wide pension reform” raises a curious distinction of when government action is “theft”:

Audience members Roger Bennis and Bob Martin both spoke against the resolution, on the grounds that the pension benefits formed the basis for a contract between the government employer and the employee.
Mr. Bennis said that pension benefits “had been bought and paid for over the working lifetime of the employee,” and the reform that takes benefits away is “theft of previously earned pension benefits.”

The article doesn’t say whether Mr. Bennis made a distinction between the current reform, which attempts not to decrease benefits that have already been earned, and a more realistic reform that might actually address the pension problem, but in either case, I can’t help but wonder: I’ve worked my entire working lifetime, thus far, to buy a house and build a financial foundation on which to raise three children. If property, sales, and income taxation increases to confiscatory levels (rather, to even more confiscatory levels) in order to support public-sector pensions, how is that not at least the very same degree of theft that Bennis decries?
Oh, sure, the government is empowered to tax, provided due process is respected, but it’s also able to adjust legislatively determined benefit levels, especially when there’s a pressing public purpose. In cases of bankruptcy, the judicial branch of government has even more leeway.
Mr. Bennis cannot have it both ways. That is, it cannot be theft to remove benefits from public employees, but not theft to increase taxes solely to cover those benefits through wealth transfer.