Your argument looks good on paper and to those who benefit from PERS.  It does not look good to those who actually have to pay for PERS (the taxpayer), especially to those tax payers who have lost jobs and are unemployed, underemployed; kept their jobs and had their pay and/or benefits cut eliminated; have retired and are living on a "fixed income".  Those are the two sides of the PERS argument and more importantly, the perception of the state voters.  
If someone can figure out how to restart the post WWII US economy that finally sputtered out around 1997 and the new "globalized" US economy started, then more folks would move from the anti-PERS camp to the pro-PERS camp.  The larger the US economic pie, the more that can enjoy it.  Its a "Brave New World."