The Overpaid Government Employees Bullshit

Randy is mad at federal workers for getting a fair deal instead of getting screwed like a good worker should.

I don’t know much about the pay freeze for federal workers, but I say RIGHT ON. What I’ve heard is that pay amongst federal workers is about 3 Obama is as self-serving as the worst of them in Washington. it’s what you get for voting based on your white-guilt.

Actually federal workers’ pay is American workers are very peculiar. They are generally getting screwed themselves, whether they realize it or not. So instead of trying to better their own position like any normal person would do, instead they lash out at those few workers who are getting paid well and getting a fair deal. Makes no sense. Misplaced envy. Dammit, let’s lower everyone to my degraded level! What kind of sense does that make? There is also a complaint against public employees’ medical benefits. They are “too generous.” I don’t think it’s possible for medical benefits to be too generous. They either give you good health care, or they don’t. Once again, envy at the few workers being treated fairly and demands that those receiving fair treatment be lowered to the same gutter level as everyone else. Randy wants to cut federal workers’ pay and redistribute it to the screwed private sector workers. Not a bad idea if it worked that way, but it doesn’t. Federal employees will be attacked, and the surplus generated will be given to the rich. Not one dime will filter down to the private sector workers. It will just be a race to the bottom for all workers. I admit there is a problem with public employee pensions. I understand a lot of high paid public employees get to retire on pensions of $100,000/yr or more. That’s just ridiculous. Let’s get real here for a second. Beating up public employees and their hard fought gains as a result of their powerful unions is a perverse sport. It’s as anti-worker as a movement gets. So why do private sector workers get behind it? The crab analogy is worthwhile. Put a bunch of crabs in a barrel. They will try to climb to the top. As a few start to make it over the edge, incredibly, the ones below will grab the successful and pull them off the edge, sending them crashing to the bottom. If I can’t succeed, no one else will either. This is the perverse mindset behind the rightwing populism of the hatred of public employees movement.

Please follow and like us:
error3
fb-share-icon20
Tweet 20
fb-share-icon20

0 thoughts on “The Overpaid Government Employees Bullshit”

  1. You’re right Robert, this is bullshit. I know people who work for the government who say they know people who leave for the private sector because they make several times as much there.

  2. Experiment: Robert call the local city manager’s office in your town and ask how much he makes a year, and what his pension will be. Then compare that income with the median income of your city and the percentage of impoverished citizens…
    My town in California was paying our city manager $300,000 a year before they fired him with a guaranteed pension of $100,000 every year for the rest of his life.

  3. eh…i was just reading about this over on mediamatters and they explained the fox news/usa today reports that i had heard about….those stories were the ones that prompted me to claim government workers are making more.
    what mediamatters pointed out was that the report did not account for the skills and type of work. when you consider that most government jobs are higher paid professional type jobs, and account for that skill level and experience, it’s maybe the other way around as you claim robert.
    but why on earth would you give two shits about pay freezes for people who are already making six figure incomes anyway? i sure don’t. maybe they could have structured the pay freeze a little different, something like “if you’re making under X amount your pay rate is not frozen.”

      1. yeah you’re probably right. i was thinking about contractors, not employees. i was also thinking about the actual politicians and their cohorts, who are very overpaid. and lawyers. goddamn lawyers.

      2. Lots of them. Median federal pay is $70k. Here’s the GS-schedule.
        I’m a GS-13 (don’t make $100k). My boss is a GS-14 (does) and his boss is a GS-15 (does).
        Of course, we all have at least Masters Degrees and 20 years experience in our field. Federal government employees are on average highly educated.
        Are we “privileged”? When jobs are tight, it seems so. But during the last economic boom, we lost a lot of staff. If you like going for the bucks, look elsewhere. If you’d rather have a secure paycheck, it’s a great employer.

  4. How many federal workers are making six figures? I’ve never known any federal workers who made that much $. Never known any public employees who did either.
    Pretty easy to find if you choose to look:
    http://www.mercurynews.com/san-mateo-county/ci_16781404
    The typical officer made $104,000 in 2009, according to salary data provided by the city. The increases would in general add a bit more than $2,000 to each officer’s salary every year, assuming they work the same hours.
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
    http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-03-30/news/17169154_1_department-heads-city-s-highest-paid-employee-midsize-city
    “Vallejo, a midsize city of 121,000, there were 292 municipal employees who earned more than $100,000 last year. But in Oakland, with roughly three times more residents, 1,333 city workers were paid six figures in the same period. San Jose, a city of almost a million people, had 2,312. And San Francisco, which serves as a city and county government for its 809,000 residents, had more than 8,000.”

    1. yeah, i chose not to go there because the post was about the freeze on federal employee pay. but it’s those kinds of things that really piss me off. so much graft and corruption.

  5. To Rob:
    I admit there is a problem with public employee pensions. I understand a lot of high paid public employees get to retire on pensions of $100,000/yr or more. That’s just ridiculous.
    Basically when there are negative comparisons about pay between private and public sector employees… overall compensation which includes the pension benefits.. are what tilts the figures towards the private sector employees.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27fob-wwln-t.html
    “Ever since theWall Street crash, there has been a bull market in Google hits for “public pensions” and “crisis.” Horror stories abound, like the one in Yonkers, where policemen in their 40s are retiring on $100,000 pensions (more than their top salaries), or in California, where payments to Calpers, the biggest state pension fund, have soared while financing for higher education has been cut. Then there is New York City, where annual pension contributions (up sixfold in a decade) would be enough to finance entire new police and fire departments.”
    Sorry kid.. gramps wants to go fishing in his new bass boat.. in the Bahamas…
    http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/01/local/la-me-pensions-20101101
    “The result is a state pension system that is among the most generous in the nation. Since 1999, police and firefighters in state and local governments have been able to retire as early as 50 with 90% of their final paychecks for life. Non-safety employees who work until 55 are eligible for 80% to 85% of their highest pay if they’ve put in enough years. Public pensions typically include annual cost-of-living increases.”

  6. Check this one out…
    http://www.parapundit.com/
    Not the US, but still. Air traffic controllers in Spain make over $500,000 /year. That’s right, over $500,000.
    Spain’s broke, about to go begging to the Germans for a bailout, so even the corrupt Socialists who run the country had to save face a little, so they told the controllers that they would have to take a %50 cut, to around $250,000. Still not a bad salary, is it? After all, the average worker in Spain earns $26,000 /year. Well of course the socialist controllers threw a tantrum and all called in sick. Well Spain discovered they can carry on without the controllers; there are enough qualified personnel in the Spanish Air Force to do the job.
    Considering that by it’s very nature government is corrupt, I don’t know how anyone can justify expanding the reach of government. Give me anarchy any day.

  7. “Right-wing populism’s” aversion to the pay gap, real or not, has healthy ethnic factors, depending on the individual involved of course.

Leave a Reply to Uncle Milton Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)