Good article that really lays out the facts behind federal employment and benefits, in contrast to a lot of the know-nothing criticisms heard here and in other places!
Not sure how you came to that conclusion. I certainly did not after reading the entire article.
“”Good article that really lays out the facts behind federal employment and benefits, in contrast to a lot of the know-nothing criticisms heard here and in other places!””
Oh yes. You are so right. I renewed my driver’s license last week and there were dozens of rocket surgeons behind the counter. Their politeness and efficiency made them worth every bit of their $100k/yr salary.
One of them was able to read and even write too which proves the highly educated part.
I’ll bet the million employees at the post office, the IRS, the passport office, the unemployment office, etc are equally impressive. If you can read a little and sorta speak sometimes, you absolutely deserve to be compensated as well as technicians, engineers, scientists, physicians, etc.
There is a little bit of truth to both sides of the argument.
The talented and honest folks work hard and many serve, like at the VA, because they honestly want to help vets. it is a mission for them, just like some who teach or serve in the military etc.
However I have also seen too many examples of what is considered stereotypical government employee traits at all levels, from wage grade all the way to executive levels. I have also seen how impossible it is to fire some one.
It is a different world, but there are more than a few government employees who really do earn their pay.
yeah yeah yeah...
Past-date baloney doesn’t smell any better in a flower shop.
Remember us? We are the unfortunate shmoes who have to deal with these “educated” gub’mint workers after standing in hours-long lines. Government workers ARE, overpaid, underworked, lazy, stupid and rude.
I have this fantasy and it’s a good one. We are able to elect congress people with the sand to go to DC and immediately- IMMEDIATELY- cut ALL fed agencies by a third, as they contemplate which ones to shut down forever (in my fantasy, they START with the EPA). They pass a constitutional amendment that “sunsets” every spending bill they have ever passed in DC and send it out to the states so that we, the voters, can give our absolute approval.
Defund the agencies so that all those “educated” government workers have to go out and get REAL jobs.
Some federal workers in technical or legal jobs may not be paid as much as counterparts in the private sector if one ignores the health and pension benefits.
The majority in clerical and administrative staff jobs are way overpaid in comparison to private sector jobs, especially factoring in fringes the feds give. Plus, about 1/4 could be cut and no one would notice.
In my personal experience, I have observed that those people with advanced degrees are actually no more intelligent than the average H.S. senior. Common sense is inversely proportional to the number of degrees held.
I will say this, that having an advanced degree means you are able to "work the system", jump through hoops of academia, backstab your peers, and prostitute yourself for grant money and prestige.
This is missing the projectile vomit alert. Just in case anyone here is a federal employee, I'll 'splain in words of as few syllables as possible.
IN A FREE MARKET YOU ARE NOT PAID BASED ON YOUR EDUCATION. You are paid based on the demand for your services. Look at professional basketball players if you want to see an example of how this works.
For most of what federal employees do there is no demand except for the artificial demand created by legislation. The entire departments of Housing and Urban development and Education could be eliminated without anyone in the private sector doing anything but rejoicing (except for those cronies of the administration who get fat contracts to swill at the taxpayer funded trough). ATF could be eliminated tomorrow, and there would be no private demand for its "services" arising in the private sector, and MacDonalds could get some new janitors (with some retraining.)
Education alone does not determine a person’s earnings potential in a free society. I’m guessing that many of these highly educated federal employees hold degrees in fuzzy studies which don’t pay in the free market.
What a steaming pant load....
Questions:
Does there need to be 1 employee of the Department of Agriculture for every 25 farmers in the United States?
Do we need 4,000 people at the Department of Education when the Department shouldn’t exist in the first place?
Can’t you merge several agencies into one eliminating thousands of jobs? Right off the top of my head merge HUD and HHS. Merge Agriculture, Transportation, Energy and Commerce.
Why does the executive branch require 30,000 employees including 1,000 not even in DC?
Why does the State Department require 12,000 of their 15,000 employees to be in DC instead of overseas?
Why do 535 members of Congress require 30,000 federal employees?
Why does NASA need 4,000 people in Washington DC?
Employee Counts: http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm
Farm counts: http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html
IMO government workers are basically bureaucrats who are good at one thing: Following directions. There’s very little innovation. Follow the script. If x does this than do that. If y is filled out then send them to p. It’s like this because there’s no motive need to be efficient or to do things different. Your actions never impact the bottom line. Put these same workers in a real world situation where they’re being evaluated on creativity, originality and running a lean, happy department and they’re lost. They can’t compete.
I am a retired federal human resources director. Qualifications for professional jobs in government generally require a college education in a specialized field. Having said that, there are many highly educated, specialized federal workers who devote themselves to non-sensical bureaucratic tasks and/or are just lazy. Best thing that could happen to the federal government is fewer inducements for careerism with a healthy dose of private sector experience.
The article is a strawman.
Years of institutionalization don’t equal “education”, nor do degrees - nor are all degrees equal within the same specialty or across specialties.
Nobody in his right mind would think, for example, that the average VA doctor is as competent as the average private practice doctor (unless you have never dealt with the VA).
I would also point out that graduate degrees in areas such as “education” and anything with a “studies” in the name have a negative value and are warning signs of credulous minds stuffed with things that aren’t true. Government abounds with these people who produce negative value added. A high school student with good CAD skills or a Microsoft certification is more “educated” that any of these people, if we are looking at education as meaning the ability to add value.
Moreover, the value of someone’s effort depends on how it is used. Even a great legal mind drafting regulations to implement Barney Frank’s plans for “affordable” housing is producing negative value.
The article is just propaganda to justify high salaries and benefits for government drone work.
They hire contractors to do the brunt of the work, then take the credit. I have seen this on numerous projects.
Yay.
The Federal Government -- AKA, the intrinsically-bankrupt, counterproductive, wealth-destroying Vampire Sector of the Economy -- is siphoning off much of society's intellectual capital, bidding educated professionals away from employment in productive endeavors.
Everybody celebrate.
I’m not slamming you personally, but I bet the Fed and State Governments could cut their workforce by 50% and nobody would really notice.
It’s just make-work with some exceptions...The Post office is useful.
I’m not including the military in that equation.
Now if someone takes a cushy job with the government, more power to them. Get it while the gettin’ is good. I just think it’s much too bloated and needs to be cut...
Truth is your friend. The truth is that federal employee compensation is double the private sector when benefits are included. IOW's the benefits package of a federal worker is only 10K less than the average salary for an American in and of itself. 40K in benefit package for fed worker and 50K average salary in private sector.
You and the state workers are killing the golden goose friend. Sooner, rather than later, the goose will keel over and die.
Twenty percent of federal workers have a master’s, professional or doctorate degree, compared with 13 percent in the private sector. Fifty-one percent of federal employees have a college degree of some sort, but only 35 percent do in the private sector.A degree in what? I bet that the guy in the private sector with a PhD in Physics or Electrical Engineering is compared here with a public sector paper pusher with a degree in Marxist Sociology or Advanced Queer Studies.
In fact, government figures indicate that federal employees are underpaid by 26 percent compared with their counterparts in similar position in the business world.The devil is in the details here, again. How exactly do they determine who “their counterparts” are? Some paper pusher who is leading a department of 20 other paper pushers in the Department of Education is in their estimation probably equivalent to a manager in the private sector running a department of 20 people generating hundreds of millions of revenue for their company every year (all of whom would be fired once they stop bringing in any more profit). But we know better, don’t we?
If the people in the Federal government are so smart and talented, why do we need so many of them?
Really - there should be a limit on how many people the Federal government can hire. Something like, oh, I don’t know, half of what it is now. I believe there are over 2,000,000 Federal government employees (excluding the Post Office). So that is about 0.67% of the population. That should be cut in half over the next 10 years and we will see how things go. Probably would not notice a bit of difference. In fact, things would probably improve.
This article is inside the Beltway BS.