Words are inadequate

Yes, $current_employer is private at present. & I expect you're right on that being part of why they can offer such good benefits. Perhaps that's the only distinction -- but I'm just curious if part of what allows the company to do well is that employees get good benefits, and that by giving no or expensive benefits, you actually are (overall and in the long run) hurting your company.

I suspect that giving good benefits to *everyone* in the company is actually just a good idea for both business & moral reasons, but it'd be nice to see whether I was right.

I was actually in an econ department experiment at GMU once that was investigating exactly that, but unfortunately, I don't know who was running it, so I have no idea what they found :P