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
Carpet Kitten
August 15th, 2010
6:20 pm
No, you most certainly were, “problem solved.” Otherwise you wouldn’t have even brought it up. I’m right, you know I’m right, so let’s both move along……….
Week in the news, Part II:
CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on yet another Sunday talk show has the host Howard Kurtz host Harry Shearer as a guest to talk about his new documentary “The Big Uneasy.” Long story short it’s about Katrina and the aftermath. Pay close attention to this caption and note that Bush is not blamed ONCE!
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: “But the other issue is the writing of the history as to why this happened and it could it happen again? Now, here, you zero in on the Army Corps of Engineers. Do you feel the mainstream media missed the mark, or is that overstating it?”
HARRY SHEARER: “I don’t zero in. The people who did the investigations, the scientists and engineers who actually know what they’re talking about, zeroed in on the Army Corps of Engineers, four decades plus of malfeasance and misfeasance that led to this disaster. I think the national news media basically did take a walk away from that as the core of this story, that this was a man-made disaster. And that’s why I was led to make the movie, to sort of try to correct the record now five years on.”
Interesting. Suddenly the liberals in the main stream media are not blaming Bush for Katrina and blaming – GASP! – the failure of GOVERNMENT!
Obama supporting the Mosque near Ground Zero has all but sealed his fate as a second term president. Just like the majority of Americans who were against ObamaCare. Bank on it.
The main liberal Democrats and their drivers in the main stream media just couldn’t figure out who the nutbag serial murderer/attacker was. Deep down you just KNOW they were salivating at the thought it may be some stupid redneck Southern Tea Bagger. But to their dismay, it turned out to be an Arab-Israeli citizen who was, by the by, caught right here in Atlanta trying to fly to Israel. Even then they wanted to blame Israel. But alas, anyone who knows anything – which generally rules out most of the main stream media – knows that the name “Abuelazam” is of Arabic descent, not of Israeli descent.
Moving along, the liberal Democrats who cut a food stamp program to fund a state aid bill (aka: state bailout due to failed liberal Democrat policies) will most likely have to strike again after Queen Antoinette Obama’s “Let’s Move” policy. No, again, you really can’t make this kind of stuff up. These are the same people who wet themelves when the Reagan administration called ketchup a vegetable.
Back to GDP growth for a second, as referenced earlier with the trade deficit report, a new GP report along with recent inventory data suggest the Department of Commerce will revise down second quarter economic growth from 2.4% annual rate to 1%. Sure am glad that trillion dollar “stimulus” bill is working as planned.
Now on to more lightened material, here was a headline: “For Tiger, a first round to relish at PGA.” My how the mighty have fallen. Tiger holds freaking PAR at a major event and it’s now headline sports news. Seriously???
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
6:27 pm
Sorry CARPET KITTEN that you are an idiot, but most people like you are.
I am moving on … because to debate with you is like arguing with a bag full of rocks!
Carpet Kitten
August 15th, 2010
6:37 pm
Awe, name calling so early here PROBLEM SOLVED? No comments about ANY of my points posted? How disappointing.
Damn I’m good.
OneFreeMan
August 15th, 2010
6:41 pm
Hooray for government employees! Instead of those in the private sector being mad at the gov’t employees, they should figure out ways to get what they deserve. Private industry is sending high paying jobs overseas while expecting the American consumer to still be able to buy their products…At some point, the debt-filled American consumers will realize they are the FOUNDATION of this economy. Stop spending and the bottom falls out.
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
6:47 pm
CARPET CLEANER .. Understand you are the moron who called me out..I was replying to another poster…
And you decided to be a butinsky, when you had no clue to which you were writing.
I proved my point to your unsolicated BS…so go away, I have nothing further to say to a babbling IDIOT!
Linda
August 15th, 2010
6:56 pm
Problem @ 5:32, I just read the transcript of the Patraeus interview. You are a liar. What you placed into quotation marks is a lie. Those words did not come out of Patraeus’ mouth. He did not say he had inherited a faulty strategy. He did not blame Bush.
I also read the spin from the website of MSNBC, which said, “US military leaders inherited a faulty strategy from the war in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush adm. & are still working to ‘refine the concepts.’ ”
Make sure you distinguish the words from a distinguished military general from the rhetoric of a liberal website & I hope you know the difference.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:02 pm
The White House needs to be white again, plain and simple.
Read the spin on msnbc all you want.
For your info Linda, Fox News tells more truth than CNN,NBC,CNBC,ABC,CBS.
Go ahead lady and drink your dark kool-aid.
Taste good now,don’t it??
Wait tell you drown your girly arse in taxes and debt……………..
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:07 pm
linda … Careful I’m hardly a liar….You might want to retract your remarks..
“In his first interview since taking over as head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus told NBC’s David Gregory that when “a lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan, we realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct and the comprehensive civil/military counterinsurgency campaign.”
So either your reading comprehension skills have dulled over the years, or you’re a total Bush Lackey either way it’s unbecoming of one so uninformed to be calling one a liar!
In the interview, which was conducted last week in Kabul and aired Sunday, Petraeus did not specifically criticize former President George W. Bush, who promoted him to head of U.S. Central Command in April 2008. But the timetable he described left little doubt that he believed the Bush administration inadequately laid the groundwork for integrating Afghan leaders into the allied military structure.
“Over the last 18 months or so” — Bush left the White House 18 months ago — “what we’ve sought to do in Afghanistan is to get the inputs right for the first time,” Petraeus said. “We needed to refine the concepts — to build, in some cases, concepts that didn’t exist” seven years after the Afghan war began in October 2001.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:07 pm
Problem ( NOT!) Solved.
And you voted for this piece of sheite for Pres…………….
Don’t complain now Mr./Mrs. Genious——————–
YOU ARE GETTING WHAT YOU ASKED FOR !!!
Southern Comfort
August 15th, 2010
7:07 pm
Kyle
If you read this or my earlier question about the SES pay, I have another question about the pay disparity. I just saw this in an article on Businessweek:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is brutally honest describing the job of retail salesperson in its 2010-11 Occupational Outlook Handbook: “Advancement opportunities are limited,” workers “often stand for long periods,” and many “work evenings and weekends, particularly during peak retail periods.” Then there’s the pay: a 2009 annual median of $20,260, 61 percent of that for all jobs. Still, it’s the most popular job in America, based on the 4.2 million people who were being paid to do it in May 2009, when the BLS conducted its survey.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/08/0812_popularity_index/18.htm
It doesn’t seem too bad on it’s own, that is, until you look closer at the list of most popular jobs in the US. Mind you, these are the most popular based on the number of people doing these jobs.
Next are cashiers (3.4 million), general office clerks (2.8 million), food preparation and serving workers (2.7 million), and registered nurses (2.6 million).
About the only group that has a chance at pulling more than $35k a year would be registered nurses. Some office clerks would probably make a good penny depending on what kind of office it is, but I don’t think as a whole, they average or median pay would be that high.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:09 pm
People like ‘problem solved ‘ ARE THE PROBLEM…………..
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:11 pm
Finally found someone who ADMITS voting for this tool..
What an idiot……….
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:11 pm
Mr Nads….Your tirade against Linda….
It’s always fun to watch someone eat their own…..
What a bunch of clowns!
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:14 pm
ps————- what a JOKE you are………
Read your rhetoric time and time again, she said/ she said and on and on……….
Aren’t you J.B. Stoner changing your moniker?? Me think so.
Linda
August 15th, 2010
7:19 pm
Mr. Nads @ 7:02, I’m on your side.
I only read MSNBC to see who Problem was actually quoting. I knew it wasn’t Patraeus.
For your info, did you know that last year, of the top 20 cable news shows, based on # of viewers, Fox had the top 13 & # 15? That guy who needs denture cream on CNN was #14? Fox has more viewers than CNN, MSNBC & the new one Nancy Grace is on—combined. More Americans want fair & balanced, we decide, than unfair & skewed, we already decided for you.
No More Progressives!
August 15th, 2010
7:20 pm
AmVet
August 15th, 2010
12:43 pm
Much of the blame for a bloated and inept bureaucracy is well deserved.
ScamWet…..well, well. Bookman gave you the day off?
Heard you’re still having trouble with that incontinence issue. Hopefully, it’ll pass.
Guess you’ll be buying another new couch, huh?
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:22 pm
Mr….No Go NADS
As a mattter of fact ill-informed one this is the first time I have ever posted on this site.
My pet MONKEY is at the vet so I needed some entertainment tonight.
And here you are. Right on schedule.
AmVet
August 15th, 2010
7:31 pm
Jeez, mystery meat. Hold a grudge or something?
There are so many of you, it’s hard to keep track.
I presume you are still hurting from a previous smackdown.
BTW, scintillating, absolutely brilliant, countermanding analysis of the subject matter.
Kudos, sir…
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:35 pm
S
orry Linda,miscostrued your thoughts, but not that of ps.
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:38 pm
It’s hilarious Go Nads and Linda have the same views, and the dumb one “go nads” can’t figure out what she/him/it is saying … and she/him/it has to explain the entire post….to the moron.
My monkey couldn’t provide more hilarity….
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:38 pm
And to AmVet, thanks for the kind words.I try to ALWAYS be scintillating,brilliant, and countermanding while analizing idiots like ‘problem un-solved’ ….
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:40 pm
And it’s Mr. BIG Nads to you ps….
ask your sister.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:42 pm
And you voted for Obloma and have the gerbel rocks to admit it??
What an idiot.
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:44 pm
That’s not what she said …. she said she saw you with your best friend Elmer in the bushes doing the nasty!
Linda
August 15th, 2010
7:47 pm
Problem @ 7:07, What you placed in quotation marks @ 5:32 & attributed to Petraeus & said, “is a direct quote of General Petraeus” was a quote from MSNBC. You lied.
What you placed in quotation marks @ 7:07 was what Petraeus actually said.
MSNBC said it left “little doubt” that he was blaming the Bush adm. I disagree. Petraeus knows better & is too much a gentleman than to get on national TV & criticize his former boss.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:48 pm
ps — you can do better than that !!!
Got a picture of your granny, a goat and a hot chili pepper swapping licks..
Come on, she said/she said…
This can go on all night.
You don’t know what your ‘e in for.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:50 pm
He’s too busy now to talk about Petraeus .His/her drawers/panties in a serious wad.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:51 pm
problem solved?? gone, finished….
PROBLEM SOLVED ………….
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:52 pm
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:38 pm
And to AmVet, thanks for the kind words.I try to ALWAYS be scintillating,brilliant, and countermanding while analizing idiots like ‘problem un-solved’ ….
So sorry moron I’m going to have to send you to bed analyzing your problems…OBTW did you notice how to spell analyzing? It’s a very common word. Especially for people who have your problem (s)
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
7:56 pm
ps ===
That’s the best you can do pointing out a misspelled word?
You do it all the time.
That’s why me think you are J.B. Stoner in drag.
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
7:56 pm
Oh holy criminey and here comes Linda again….I’ve never had this much fun since my monkey jumped on my dog and shouted hi ho silver!
Linda
August 15th, 2010
8:02 pm
Problem, Would you have voted for Obama if you had known that he would appoint as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Policy (Green Jobs Czar) a self- avowed Communist, a black Nationalist, an anarchist, an anti-capitalist, a 9-11 truther, etc.?
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
8:04 pm
gonna leave it with ya folks.
Got 3 dozen oysters on the half shell to consume.
Dexter’s hungry.
Mr. Nads
August 15th, 2010
8:05 pm
Linda—yes he would. He doesnt know any better.
SEE YA.
Linda
August 15th, 2010
8:10 pm
Problem, Would you have voted for Obama if you had known that he would appoint a man as head of Medicare & Medicaid, with a budget higher than the entire military, during a congressional recess without being veted or even nominated, who said. “Any health care funding plan than is just, equitable, civilized & human must, MUST redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer & less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”?
J.B. STONER
August 15th, 2010
8:21 pm
.
Linda
August 15th, 2010
8:21 pm
Problem, would you have voted for Obama if you had known that he would appoint as manufacturing czar a man said, “We know that the free market is nonsense…convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this largely about power, that it’s an adults only no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun & we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog.”?
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
8:24 pm
let us recapsulate….Dusty writes all of us opposed to war are a bunch of cowards, and I respond not so…I served in war! No Nads says I’m lying, in the meantime I insert an article by MSNBC which said Patrateus
stated that paraphrasing here state the Bush administration mishandled the war. Linda immediately jumps in and calls me a liar (I just posted what I read) but I’m a liar. No Nads misreads Linda’s post and goes ballistic, causing Linda to write two or three apologies to no nads. My monkey jumps on the back of my dog shouts hi ho silver. and the funnies continue!
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
8:29 pm
Linda…I’ll be responsive to that question…If I had known half of the people Obama would put in place in his administration the answer would be no. However the only reason I voted for him (I was a Clinton)
supporter….was that I considered him to be the lesser of two evils!
Linda
August 15th, 2010
8:45 pm
Problem, This is between you & I & it started at 5:32 when you misquoted the general, attributing what MSNBC said as “a direct quote of Gen. Petraeus.”
This is very simple.
jt
August 15th, 2010
8:55 pm
The issue is not how MUCH these parasites get paid.
The REAL issue is that these parasites get PAID……………….period.
Federal Office of Child Support,
Rural Electric Authority,
Department of Education,
DEA,ATF,TSA,etc,,ad nauseum……………..
Let us take it back. CLAWBACK with extreme prejudice. We can do it the hard way or the easy way.
Alas, just a pipe dream. The R & D party ALWAYS wins as long as there is wealth left to be plundered.
Those who vote for these parasites are really worse than the parasites.
Grand Forks
August 15th, 2010
8:58 pm
“hey forks, i guess you would have a hard time figuring that out……missy”
No, it’s actually quite easy figuring retards like you out.
Grand Forks
August 15th, 2010
8:59 pm
Geez, Kookman goes on vacation and all the retarded leftovers come over here to pi$$ on the fire hydrant.
jt
August 15th, 2010
9:01 pm
This is what could happen.
A nip in the bud…………………..IF you really cared about your children and grandchildren.
Watch the cowards run when confronted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYmy0zr3WL8&feature=related
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
9:03 pm
Linda give it a rest I never misquoted anyone I just threw out the MSNBC report. Take it up with them…You are beginning to bore me!
U.S. military leaders inherited a faulty strategy for the war in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush administration and are still working to “refine the concepts,” the U.S. commander said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
In his first interview since taking over as head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus told NBC’s David Gregory that when “a lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan, we realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct and the comprehensive civil/military counterinsurgency campaign.”
In the interview, which was conducted last week in Kabul and aired Sunday, Petraeus did not specifically criticize former President George W. Bush, who promoted him to head of U.S. Central Command in April 2008. But the timetable he described left little doubt that he believed the Bush administration inadequately laid the groundwork for integrating Afghan leaders into the allied military structure.
“Over the last 18 months or so” — Bush left the White House 18 months ago — “what we’ve sought to do in Afghanistan is to get the inputs right for the first time,” Petraeus said. “We needed to refine the concepts — to build, in some cases, concepts that didn’t exist” seven years after the Afghan war began in October 2001.
Grand Forks
August 15th, 2010
9:04 pm
You know it’s bad when Bedwet comes over here. I guess she can’t play with her friend Granny over on Tuckers blog. Poor retard.
Grand Forks
August 15th, 2010
9:05 pm
Left wing retards hate poor people.
Dems may use food stamp money to pay for Michelle Obama’s nutrition initiative
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/114271-dems-consider-more-food-stamp-cuts-to-fund-child-nutrition-bill
Linda
August 15th, 2010
9:27 pm
Problem @ 9:03, I told you from the beginning that I read the entire transcript & the MSNBC article in full. It’s unnecessary for you to keep quoting from them & trying to keep spinning what you did.
You can watch, read & quote MSNBC or whoever all you want, but you will not misrepresent, misquote, plagiarize or lie about words of our top military general, responsible not only for the lives of our men & women in Afghanistan but the mission intended to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil, & get away with it, not when I’m present. You will not put words in the mouth of our military leader aimed at discrediting his efforts to bring peace in Afghanistan from a liberal website aimed at ending the war at all costs.
You said you served in the military & for that I am grateful, but for that reason, you should be more respectful to all our soldiers & understand that their leadership deserves honesty & the truth.
Dusty
August 15th, 2010
9:54 pm
Linda @ 9:27
I like your fine post. My thoughts exactly.
The Viet Nam stories by “Problem” are quite familiar. I believe he was banned from another blog for his persistent animosity. He loves to pick a fight. Seems to have a problem. I hope he gets help.
problem solved
August 15th, 2010
9:58 pm
“You said you served in the military & for that I am grateful, but for that reason, you should be more respectful to all our soldiers & understand that their leadership deserves honesty & the truth”.
I would never be disrespectful of our soldiers. And I totally support your contention that they deserve the very best in leadership. Unfortunately that is not always the case…You know what leadership is, it’s standing up to those who’s actions would harm, or put in harms way a fellow, but lower ranking soldier.
As an example in 1966 I was flying out of An Khe with the 1st cav (Air mobile) 229th HAB, my huey had two door gunners, and the new battalion
commander (a major) was flying in the left seat. As I leveled off at 300 feet and increased our speed to approx 115 knots, He said to me increase altitude to 800 and decrease speed to 50,,,I want to survey what’s below. I turned to him, and I said eff you….I’m not putting any of my crew at risk so you can sight see. At the time I was a WO1,
but I was also the PIC (Pilot in command) Chaffed that idiots ass big time, but I think he got the message