The real ‘two Americas’: government and the governed
The public sector sees a totally different America than the rest of us do.
That’s true in the broadest sense: Two-thirds of the political class believe the country is moving in the right direction, while 84 percent of other Americans think we’re headed the wrong way, according to a Rasmussen Reports opinion poll earlier this month.
But the divide between government and the governed goes deeper than these momentary feelings. It shows up in our paychecks as well.
Last week USA Today reported that the average federal civilian employee earns twice as much in salary and benefits as the average private-sector worker. These federal workers are paid 61 percent more than the rest of us and receive almost four times as much in retirement and other benefits.
President Barack Obama has proposed an across-the-board pay raise of 1.4 percent next year for these 2 million workers, at a cost of $2.2 billion. The USA Today story noted that this would be the smallest federal pay hike in a decade.
To those whose pay has been frozen for a while now, a raise of “only” 1.4 percent doesn’t sound like much of a sacrifice.
But hey, don’t blame the feds for feeling like they’re getting shortchanged this year: Even adjusted for inflation, their pay has climbed almost 37 percent since 2000, or four times faster than wages for the rest of us.
Despite Obama’s new, ahem, restraint on salaries, it doesn’t look as if this gap will get narrower anytime soon.
On Thursday, I searched the federal government’s employment website, USAJobs.gov, for openings in metro Atlanta.
A search for jobs in my ZIP code turned up 169 listings from the North Carolina border to the Florida line, even though the search was supposed to be within a 20-mile radius (that’s close enough for government work, I guess).
A dozen jobs listed no salary figure. Of the other 157, a staggering 110 were for more than the average wage in their county, according to the latest federal data. Add the greater value of public benefits, and 144 of the 157 were above average.
And these are just minimums — each of the 157 listings had a pay scale based on factors like experience, and I’ve cited the bottom of these ranges. But for 92 of the jobs, the scale topped out above $100,000.
Some openings were for jobs like epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control, which you’d expect to pay better than the average job in DeKalb County. But there were also jobs like the one paying up to $85,000 a year for a maintenance mechanic supervisor in Calhoun, where the average annual wage is less than $35,000.
No wonder the political/bureaucratic class thinks we have it so good.
And no wonder the political/bureaucratic class thinks the answer to problems ranging from health care to Wall Street is to hire more bureaucrats and give more power to politicians. From their vantage point, the world works pretty well.
But when you’re one of the millions of Americans who earns half as much as a federal bureaucrat simply because your employer has to answer to market conditions and his doesn’t, things aren’t so rosy.
Ditto if you’re one of the millions more who pays for his salary regardless of whether he provides you with a service — much less whether you think that service is valuable.
The political class likes to talk about whether we can countenance a new age of austerity. What its members don’t realize is that, for many of the rest of us, it’s already here.
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290 comments Add your comment
Garor Joe
August 14th, 2010
10:26 am
Sorry for the typo, I’m Gator Joe, not “Garor” Joe.
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
10:31 am
The NY Times admits that Obama is an idiotic, retarded, child-like, stupid, in-over-his-head, troglodyte.
The Obama administration seems to be feeling sorry for itself. Robert Gibbs, the president’s press secretary, is perturbed that Mr. Obama is not getting more hosannas from liberals.
Spare me. The country is a mess. The economy is horrendous, and millions of American families are running out of ammunition in their fight against destitution. Steadily increasing numbers of middle-class families, who never thought they’d be seeking charity, have been showing up at food pantries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/opinion/14herbert.html?_r=1
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
10:33 am
This guy would kick Obama’s child-like @ss in 1 second flat. Too bad we can’t deport the muslim back to his native Indonesian land and import an actual leader like Bibi.
Gotta hate left wing retards for voting in this utter disaster of a president.
Netanyahu’s warning
When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/13/AR2010081304474.html
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
10:36 am
“wait until the Republicans take over once again.”
Yeah, gee, unemployment will go back to normal and we’ll all have jobs.
Joe, you are one dumb gal.
Grumpy
August 14th, 2010
10:40 am
The “twice as much” statistic is misleading. Most federal jobs require 4 year degrees. I would be interested in an “apples to apples” comparison of jobs by industry. I’m sure federal jobs would still pay more, but the gap would not be as large, and in some industries might be smaller.
DannyX
August 14th, 2010
10:42 am
“Yeah, gee, unemployment will go back to normal and we’ll all have jobs.”
Oh yes a return to the glory days of losing nearly a million jobs a month. Great logic. To a Republican returning to normal means losing a million jobs a month. Brilliant.
Del
August 14th, 2010
10:42 am
The times we live in certainly do not favor having a president whose both a radical and an incompetent. The left continues this childish ploy of referring back to the Reagan and Bush years, while trying to ignore the present and the future.
booger
August 14th, 2010
10:54 am
It’s very easy to spot the government workers in these posts.
ATF
August 14th, 2010
10:55 am
“But hey, don’t blame the feds for feeling like they’re getting shortchanged this year: Even adjusted for inflation, their pay has climbed almost 37 percent since 2000, or four times faster than wages for the rest of us.”
Well, one of the problems is that productivity increases did not translate into pay for most workers who, in fact, produced the productivity increases. The pay increases went disproportionately to the top.
Second problme is we don’t know the time period being measured. I get the year 2000 part. But is the end point this year, in the middle of a terrible recession/depression. It seems to be stating the obvious to say that wages have declined if your end point is now.
always, always, always suspect an “average”. Far more telling is the median and the shape of the line across low, middle, and high. always know the time range. for all I know, this is smoked glass and mirrors.
this being said, I agree that governmetn workers probably are overpaid and have benefits much greater than those offered in private business.
When, when will the dim Dems start paying people to work on infrastructure rather than paying them to do nothing. Any more “unemployment benefits” need to be work-while-you-earn benefits. At least the public will get something out of it.
booger
August 14th, 2010
10:57 am
Obama has been and is a disaster. However, we can vote him out of office when the time comes. We should not fear Obama and his socialist agenda, what we should fear is an electorate ignorant enough to put him and his agenda into office.
DannyX
August 14th, 2010
10:59 am
“”The left continues this childish ploy of referring back to the Reagan and Bush years, while trying to ignore the present and the future.”"
Oh yes the childish ploy of having a memory that goes back a whole year and a half. Mean while Georgia is about to elect ex-Democrat now Republican Nathan Deal. The man who recently as a Republican congressman…
Voted YES for the $26.5 Billion No Child Left Behind act
Voted YES for $100 Billion in farm subsidies
Voted YES for $16.6 Billion on welfare programs
Voted YES on the $350 Billion on Medicare Part D.
Voted YES for the $23 Billion Head Start Program.
Voted YES for two UNFUNDED wars.
Voted YES on the Bush tax cuts that increased the deficit because of skyrocketing spending.
A man that joins corrupt public officials like Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel who can win elections despite all their baggage.
Great logic.
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
11:01 am
“Oh yes a return to the glory days of losing nearly a million jobs a month.”
You aren’t smart are you. Million jobs a month???????????????? When did THAT happen, Nancy Pelosi?
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
11:03 am
“A man that joins corrupt public officials like Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel who can win elections despite all their baggage.”
Can’t argue with you there, ma’am.
shorty
August 14th, 2010
11:03 am
I oppose President Obama’s borrow and spend policies, but I support his stand on the building of the mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero.
Ever since 9/11, many Americans have opposed building of new mosques and expansion of existing mosques in some American cities and towns. Some argue that nations like Saudi Arabia do not allow any Jewish or Christian places of worship to be built on their soil, so we should not allow Islam to build any here.
What we should be saying is that the United States is the greatest and freest nation in the world, so we should allow all religions to build at all places, including near Ground Zero.
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
11:05 am
shorty
Sweet, so I guess you have no problem with the KKK opening up operations near the MLK center, cowboy museums on Indian reservations and neo-nazi offices near the NAACP offices.
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
11:06 am
“so we should allow all religions to build at all places, including near Ground Zero.”
Then I guess you have no problem with Japanese building Kamakazee memorials at Pearl Harbor.
Retard.
Grand Forks
August 14th, 2010
11:07 am
“Some argue that nations like Saudi Arabia do not allow any Jewish or Christian places of worship to be built on their soil, so we should not allow Islam to build any here.”
Uh, big difference, ma’am. We don’t go out and behead and kill muslims for wanting to build mosques here. Muslims DO kill Christians, Jews, gays, women etc for anything and everything.
You need to do some research, ma’am.
booger
August 14th, 2010
11:09 am
Shorty,
Let’s take it a step further. Let the government send Baptist preachers around the world to promote christianity. Maybe a few Methodists as well. After all, we do have plenty of money as evidenced by our pay levels in government.
Jim Jr
August 14th, 2010
11:11 am
“How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.”
Get it? Not “destroying.” The GOP has already “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.”
We’ve arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.
Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:
Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy
Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and sacrifice.” But instead, the GOP insists “that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”
In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”
No more. Today there’s a “new catechism” that’s “little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes” making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in “serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.
Stockman’s indictment warns that the Republican party’s “new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:”
Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge
Richard Nixon’s gold policies get Stockman’s first assault, for defaulting “on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world.” So for the past 40 years, America’s been living “beyond our means as a nation” on “borrowed prosperity on an epic scale … an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves.”
Remember Friedman: “Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately “once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.”
And without discipline America was also encouraging “global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.” Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist’s advice.
No More Progressives!
August 14th, 2010
11:12 am
Don’t forget
August 14th, 2010
12:48 am
“Let me get this straight Kyle. For the past 30 years CEO pay has exploded,……….”
I’d like to see you (and other whiny socialists) on this blog get paid the way CEO’s (and I) get paid.
A salary. Market based.
Stock options. The value of the stock goes up (or down) depending upon the performance of the company.
Commissions, directly in proportion to how productive you are.
You’d starve in 2 months.
booger
August 14th, 2010
11:15 am
Kyle,
The real question I have is why on earth we are hiring a Federal employee to supervise mechanics in Calhoun? How many Federal workers and vehicles can there be in Calhoun? I assure you there are plenty of qualified mechanics there to handle the job. These jobs should be contracted out, and private sector employees hired to do the job, at half the price I might add.
Miller
August 14th, 2010
11:15 am
This is nothing more than recycled trash from a previous USA Today article with a dish of baloney from the columnist. At least the USA Today article broke a comparison down by job classes. When you do that you see that the differences in compensation aren’t anywhere near the headline. For instance, for an engineer there is about a $9000 per annum pay gap. What does differ a good bit are medical benefits etc.
It is certainly a worthy topic of discussion but compared to the bailout monies given to Wall Street and CEO pay it’s just not that critical. However, small-minded people such as the columnist who do nothing but recycle nonsensical Fox News talking points have to write something.
shorty
August 14th, 2010
11:16 am
Grand Forks, are we to blame Muslim American citizens for the attacks on Ground Zero? Is Islam equivalent to KKK and neo-nazi?
Can you respond with intelligent arguments instead of name calling?
shorty
August 14th, 2010
11:28 am
The 19 men who attacked us on 9/11 were fools who believed not only that Allah wanted to kill us, but would also give them rooms full of virgins in the afterlife. Don’t judge all of Islam by the actions of violent fools like these.
booger
August 14th, 2010
11:28 am
Miller,
So how much more should a Federal employee make than his/her counterpart in private industry? 20%? 50%. Why don’t you give us a number so we will know when we can get upset.
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
11:29 am
When I read the angry, ignorant, semi-literate rants of reactionary cybervigilantes like Danny K, and racist fools like Grand forks who thinks that a Harvard educated lawyer who taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago for eight years is “an idiotic, retarded, child-like, stupid, in-over-his-head, troglodyte” and that he is a “Muslim” I realize what how a reformed alcoholic and drug addict in Glen Beck with no degree of any kind, no college credits, no journalistic training, no knowledge, and a probable bipolar personality is taken seriously.
Some of the people here, including me, refuted this guy’s oversimplified weak analogy decisively, and the conservatives posting here, typically, have chosen to ignore these responses and engage in their usual personal attacks, irrelevant rants, ideological assertions, and abuse. Why? I think it is because most of them are incapable of giving a reasoned response and instead mask their inability to give an argument, respond to one, or even follow an argument, by resorting to emotive language and put downs. In fact this is the modus operandi of the right as anyone can recognize in the leading “commentators” and opinion makers on the right in Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and others. And the WSJ and its writers are now little more than slightly elevated versions of these same people running the same lines, positions, and rhetoric.
Every year I wonder how much dumber American conservatism can become, how more immune to evidence and argument conservatives can become, and yet they manage to lower themselves even more. (Witness Palin and the “tea party” mob.) Just when I thought that they have become the shallowest, least intelligent and informed section of any electorate in the democratic world they manage to set their standards even lower.
A few conservatives such as the new editors of the Atlantic Monthly are disturbed by the anger, extremism, and lack of critical thinking on the right and are calling for civility, moderation, and return to evidence and argument so that the GOP isn’t given over entirely to the fringes of the right. The problem is, as conservative David Brooks pointed out, the fringe has become the mainstream and rescuing American conservatism from demagoguery approaching madness is probably a lost cause.
wallbanger
August 14th, 2010
11:34 am
What is pretty amazing is that most of the U.S. public isn’t even aware of the discrepancy in salaries and benefits. I think if the voters knew that government workers, who generally are minority hires where possible, and almost impossible to fire once they are “in”, get way more than they do and across the board increases, the public would be very angry. A fairly well educated liberal friend of mine was laboring under the misapprehension that government salaries were lower than private until I directed her to the Dept. Of Labor Statistics website where it became clear they are out of sight. We are paying for these idiots, getting lousy service, and they are retiring with fat pensions while we try to figure out who we are going to live with in our old age. Not right at all. The revolt is overdue.
wallbanger
August 14th, 2010
11:36 am
Conservatism Needs Some Intellect– I rejoin: Liberals need some common sense and an education in economics 101.
nelson
August 14th, 2010
11:39 am
Nancy Pelosi is a government employee. She has a military pane that flies her to California every weekend. It is a 757-200 Jumbo Jet. It seats 186 passengers. This plane costs 22,000 dollars per hour to operate. Nancy uses this plane because it can fly coast to coast without refueling.
With government employees, it is not the salary, it is the fringe benefits.
Nobody really cares anymore, with trillions of fedeal dollars spent every year money has lost its meaning to federal employees. It does not mean anything, either you have food and shelter or you do not.
DannyX
August 14th, 2010
11:40 am
There is talk of Christians wanting to put up a church near Olympic Park in Atlanta.
ARE THESE PEOPLE CRAZY!!!!
Wow. Eric Robert Rudolph is a radical Christian. He bombed 3 different places. He represents about a billion Christians.
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
11:40 am
No more progressives…Not all of us worship at the alter of the market place god and accept the arrogant blowhard assertions of people like you as gospel and the fact that you make a lot of money is completely irrelevant to the merits or truth of falsity of anything you claim. I would like to see you in a serious intellectual setting as you would be laughed out of the room in less than two minutes.
The “free market” does not hold CEOs accountable at all for the consequences of their mismanagement. You won’t find any of them collecting unemployment, unlike the workers who lose their jobs because of poor decisions. Instead, we have the government bailing out inadequately regulated greedy financial institutions. And their failures cannot be blamed on unions or workers.
No country practices an unregulated market system and no wealthy, stable, democratic society in the world lacks a substantial role for government. That is the reality of the 21st century.
America
Don't forget
August 14th, 2010
11:42 am
No More Progressives!
August 14th, 2010
11:12 am
Don’t forget
August 14th, 2010
12:48 am
“Let me get this straight Kyle. For the past 30 years CEO pay has exploded,……….”
I’d like to see you (and other whiny socialists) on this blog get paid the way CEO’s (and I) get paid.
A salary. Market based.
Stock options. The value of the stock goes up (or down) depending upon the performance of the company.
Commissions, directly in proportion to how productive you are.
You’d starve in 2 months.
——————————————————————————————
Guess again Sherlock. I have a skill that is in high demand and do just fine thank you.
If you think CEO’s get paid on the basis of the “free market” you’re delusional. It’s crony capitalism plain and simple.
Take a look at some of these examples and try to tell me they “earned” their compensation.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38643836?slide=1
BTW, it takes no managerial talent whatsover to send jobs overseas to get 80 cent/hr wages.
booger
August 14th, 2010
11:42 am
Conservative…..intellect,
Can we assume then you are a Federal employee, or an “educator”? You have just written a long post full of emotion and calling lots of conservatives very unflattering names in an effort to tell people conservatives are blowhards who just call people names…….how ironic.
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
11:42 am
Walbanger, not much of a response. Let me invite you to read the content of the post and explain what is wrong with it. Address points, if you can, rather than make silly personal accusations which seems to be all I hear from you conservatives.
shorty
August 14th, 2010
11:44 am
Is Nancy Pelosi the first speaker of the house to waste federal dollars on flying to his/her home state?
Wasting our tax money is a bi-partisan project.
wallbanger
August 14th, 2010
11:44 am
By the way, all of you who believe the figures are wrong. Go to the Dept. of Labor Statistics website and compare the jobs listings. They show engineers/doctors, etc. by profession and the huge differences in salaries between government and private sector employees. And remember, that while the gov’t worker gets substantial benefits, the private sector worker is getting almost none these days. And who says the government doesn’t employe gardners, maids, etc? Who do you think takes care of the Obamination in the white house?
Exactmerob
August 14th, 2010
11:46 am
Kyle, I love the way you use data – you compare a goverment sector job that “pays up to $85,000″ (i.e. the very top of the pay grade, which is in practice almost never obtained) with the AVERAGE private sector salary in that community. Way to make the numbers support your conclusion!
Ayn Rand's second cousin, twice removed
August 14th, 2010
11:47 am
Meanwhile, a key portion of the Republican solution to all that ails us is to reduce social security benefits, preferably to zero as quickly as possible, eliminate the corporate contribution to social security and shift the entire payroll tax burden over to the workers that make less than $100k per year and use the savings to fund a tax cut for those making over one million per year, preferably via unearned income.
Port O'John
August 14th, 2010
11:55 am
When you start with a conclusion and then only cite facts that support your conclusion, you have another partisan opinion piece. GOP Senator Scott Brown has been going around claiming how much federal worker pay is out of step with ‘real americans’. A little bit of research would show that all of these claims are based on comparing oranges to watermelons.
In this piece Kyle says: “Of the other 157 (federal jobs), a staggering 110 were for more than the average wage in their county…” What this misses is that the “average wage of the county” includes a lot of jobs that are not part of the federal workplace. Some federal jobs pay more, some pay less when compared to the private sector..
But tis the season to demonize the government and government employees. Republican Senator Scott Brown’s similar claim was outed as false months ago:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/03/scott-brown/politifact-debut-brown-says-federal-jobs-pay-twice/
.
DannyX
August 14th, 2010
11:56 am
The top 5 health insurance companies paid their CEO’s a cumulative $200 million dollars last year.
Looks like the President needs about a $39.75 million dollar a year raise.
Nathan Deal shouldn’t have to steal taxpayer money anymore, as governor he should be worth at least $20 million dollars a year. Heck, he should be flying all over the world in a nice private jet. How does world traveler Sonny get around?
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
11:59 am
Booger,
One’s occupation is evidentially irrelevant to whether their argument is a good one or a bad one. Whether one is a CEO, policeman, teacher, fireman, or preacher their arguments stand or fall on the evidence that is given. And I notice that, as usual, you didn’t say a thing of substance or address any of the content of what I said.
According to several political scientists and real journalists Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Hannity are the most influential conservatives in America listened to my millions of gullible people every day. None of them has a degree in any field, none of them has any journalistic training at all, and they seem to have read virtually nothing about economics, international relations, history, literature, science, education, or anything else. Sara Palin kicked around at four different colleges before becoming graduating with a degree in the tough field of sports journalism. She makes up words, cannot answer questions beyond repeating the same stock phrases and talking points, and she is the most popular GOP politician in America at the moment. George Bush didn’t know the difference between Shiite and Sunni Islam going into Iraq, didn’t know who were the leaders of India, Pakistan, and Canada after wining the the GOP nomination (and we paid a heavy price for his ignorance and incompetence didn’t we?)
How can you or anyone defend this lack of intellectual substance in the leading figures of American conservatism? The fact that they are popular means nothing with respect to their lack of credentials and lack of knowledge.
Why not heed the advice of the two young conservatives now editing The Atlantic Monthly who have written a book calling for the moderation and intellectual rescue of American conservatism from a bunch of empty headed demagogues? Why not at least read people like George Will and David Brooks? Is intelligence and education some sort of vice? It would seem so to listen to the thousands of people who post and speak just like those we see here today. Will has a PhD in philosophy from Princeton. I guess that means that he should be ignored as one of the snobby “elite.” He is a snob but he is also a smart conservative. Though I seldom agree with him though often I agree with Brooks who formerly edited the Weekly Standard I respect them both. What I cannot and will not respect is a collection of ignorant circus barkers in talk radio and Fox and politicians like Palin who invoke mindless claims and rhetoric about “death panels,” “socialism,” “government takeover,” Obama is a “Muslim,” who wasn’t born in the United States and so on.
There is no justification or excuse for this and intelligent, educated conservatives admit this why can’t the rest of you?
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
12:04 pm
Nelson, Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House and one of the most important figures in U.S. government not an ordinary worker in the civil service and her perquisites are not at all typical. Republican politicians in the same positions have the same benefits and it may be necessary for a few people who are in the highest places in government to have such things because of the importance of their work.
By the way, there are 9000 corporate jets whose operating costs are written off to the tune of 100%. That is like having an airline providing private service to a handful of people being paid for by taxes. Dwarfs the percs of Pelosi doesn’t it? The free market we hear so much of at work.
B. Morris
August 14th, 2010
12:14 pm
When the White House released its staff salaries as all administrations have done annually since 1995. The list went from the top, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, all the way down to the lowest-level employee. The Office of Vice President and Office of Management were not included. The staggering sum for the Obama administration staff came in at $38,796,307.00 .
In comparison, the White House staff salaries for President Bush’s last year in office, 2008, came to $33,193,021.00. That’s a difference of $5,603,286.00, or an increase of 16.9% from the Bush administration to the current Obama administration. That’s a lot of “change.”
booger
August 14th, 2010
12:25 pm
Conservative…..Intellect,
I did address the content of what you said. You said all conservatives do is name call, then you went on to attack and call many well known conservatives names. I simply pointed out that this was ironic. As an intellectual elite, I would have thought you woud see the humor in that.
By the way George Will is one of my favorites. As was Buckley. I have no problem with intellectuals in general, just with those who think that anyone who is not is somehow inferior.
Don't forget
August 14th, 2010
12:28 pm
Yeah, some people have a real tough time
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/01/markets/hedge_fund_manager_pay/
Don't forget
August 14th, 2010
12:29 pm
But at least they get some breaks
http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2010/06/hedge-fund-managers-15-percent-flat-tax.html
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
12:32 pm
Wallbanger, the number of workers, many illegal, who are employed in the private landscaping differs by an order of magnitude to the small number who keep up the grounds of the White House and other public domains. Moreover, as many have pointed out here the public sector is non-profit, needs a stable workforce, is much smaller, and has different purposes from the private sector. And this is why this ideological journalist’s piece is a non-starter.
Consider that Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States and the world with 1.4 million workers in the United States. The government is a non-profit entity not cheap retailer which exploits its workers and imports cheap goods from dictatorships such as China. Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, has detailed its practices, in his book is called “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.” And the same has been done by other economists.
It is quite sad how so many people who are gaining the least from American capitalism are unable or unwilling to examine its practices and what is flowing from them and instead choose to follow the prevailing reactionary ideology and blame government and attack it for everything under the sun. Fox has done a great job with its propaganda and one has to confess that the GOP has been superb as well in working with its unofficial network and its talk radio allies.
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
12:36 pm
Booger, no you didn’t address the argumentative content of what I said nor the justification I offered for why conservatism has become intellectually bankrupt in the fact that so many conservatives rely on uneducated people like Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh. Instead, you chose to ignore over 90% of what I said and take the rest out of context. Par for the course.
Conservatism needs some intellect
August 14th, 2010
12:39 pm
Booger, most conservatives, unfortunately, have never heard of George Will let alone watch or read him and similarly for Brooks who is lambasted by Limbaugh who has an audience which is probably 30 times the size of those two combined. Those who are considered to be the most influential conservatives in America by political scientists and media communication academics are Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity. And Will and Brooks are not even on the radar screen.
DawgDad
August 14th, 2010
1:05 pm
When a governing class becomes too powerful in relation to the governed very bad and evil things are inevitable. At best, the ruling class will embark on a slippery slope of usurping personal liberty, property, and eventually lives.
Question: Since our “civil servants” are making all this money relative to their private sector counterparts AND they are the self-proclaimed to be enlightened politically, why are we seeing all these layoffs and fuloughs in the public sector? Shouldn’t public sector employees be demanding “social justice” and redistribution of THEIR wealth for the benefit of their co-workers? Think about all the whining and crying we’re hearing from our teachers and State employees.
Just asking.