Despite protests against pension cuts, public employees are often better off than private ones.

The coalition's plans to cut public sector pensions have already sparked strikes and protests across the country; more are likely to follow. At heart, however, this is not just a row about pensions. The pension changes come together with hundreds of thousands of job losses and a two-year pay freeze as the government tries to reduce both short and long-term spending. All this shines a light on the widening gap between the public and private sectors; a gap which has increasingly made the two parts of the economy seem almost foreign to each other.

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