Posted on 08/12/2010 8:38:35 AM PDT by toma29
Six-figure pensions. Impossible to be laid off or fired. Paid furloughs. Tons of vacation time. According to the media, these workers are the middle class.
From ABC News:
Civil Servants Find Themselves Cast in Unlikely Role -- Fat Cats
They are being cast that way because you only have to look at their salaries and pensions to deduce that.
Move over Wall Street traders -- seems there's a new vampire squid in town. Civil servants?Passage Tuesday of a controversial bill sending billions of dollars to states to shore up payrolls for public school teachers further stoked the debate over whether government employees, their unions and their benefits packages are bankrupting the country.
"[The bill] will make the teachers unions happy, but it won't make teaching in schools better," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., at a press conference Tuesday during which he and other Republican leaders criticized legislation earmarking $26 billion in aid for school districts and other state agencies.
Vampire squid? Btw, they are no longer civil servants. They are leeches.
"As a society, we meant well but we overpromised,"
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.usefulinfonation.com ...
The average public or government worker makes double what a private worker makes.....middle class my ass. Want to become a millionaire? Get a job as a public or government worker.... =.=
Just about everyone considers themselves middle-class, which is why the term is used over and over again without definition.
The leeches are sucking their hosts dry - it is already beyond that, but the general public remains ignorant.
Not in my case. I work in the education sector (IT Dept.) I make half of what I would be making in the private sector. The reason I do it is because I like to be a contributing element in the betterment of our children’s future.
It’s ironic when reading the various threads that when the Obamas call $250,000 rich we wail and moan, but when we talk about public emplyees who make less, they are not middle calss. Makes the head spin.
I filed for some permits for home improvements and now a city government worker is pestering me to hire him and his family members for projects. First he came on my property, flashed a police-looking badge, and said he is a city approved contractor. Obviously running a side business, he has way too much time on his hands. And the landscaping company that cuts my lawn is owned by a policeman. How many government workers have the time to run side businesses? The same one's putting in for $100k overtime every year because they can't get their jobs done?
Hmph! I thought that I was in the middle class, but NONE of that describes me and I have an MBA.
So, based on that description, I guess I am in the lower class. Which begs the question, "why am I paying taxes?"
An out of work private sector IT guy would likely be happy with about 80% of your current salary until he found something better or gets a few promotions.
I say cut every government workers’ salary by 50%, no matter what.
If it is so easy to get a gubmint job making six figures, then why doesn’t everybody do it?
So check out who owns the McMansions in your area and see how many cops, firemen and teachers live there. If you find they are loaded with civil service workers, then people need to kick their ass for not taking the tests and becoming one.
Not sure where you are getting your data to base your naive statement on... but you can reverse that trend here in North Carolina. State workers historically make 50-60% less than private sector personnel in the same jobs.
Also, our medical costs are beginning to climb tremendously with little to show for it, we’ve had NO pay-raises in the last 3 years and we expect to see furloughs for many shortly because of politically motivated budget cuts..
Yeah, we’re sitting fat, dumb and happy at the top of the food chain here doncha know?
Agreed. I've gotten into silly arguments with people over the term, some even throwing dollar figures at me as proof.
If you can lose your income tomorrow, you are not middle-class, my friend. You may have a middle-class "lifestyle" but you were only deceiving yourself.
(Try using lower middle-class and watch the brows furrow and the spittle fly.)
most do it the old-fashion goobermint way- retire at 50 and then get another govt job.
AKA “double dipping”
http://www.pensiontsunami.com/public.php
Pure BS. This is like saying the average lawyer makes 10 times the average Fry cook.
Does the average government equipment operator make double what the average private equipment operator makes?
Does a government lawyer make what a private lawyer makes?
Does a government engineer make what a private engineer makes?
This “double” number comes from the fact that you don’t have armies of burger flippers, chamber maids, lawn mowers, day care workers, counter clerks and countless other minimim wage workers in government. Since they don’t employ those classes except in very small numbers, government tends to be top heavy in more white collar work which is generally higher paying.
You have to look at the salaries regarding specific jobs, not just the totals. You are not comparing apples to apples.
If you still think the average government tractor operator earns double the average union (private) tractor operator, then post up their salaries for proof.
If you think the average government lawyer makes double the averge private lawyer, then post up their salaries for proof.
You are exactly right; what this really shows is that the government has succeeded with Pres. Bush’s initiative of privatizing blue collar jobs that could be done more cheaply by contract labor within the government.
A huge difference that I see in the SoCal beach communities between the 1970s and today, is that many of the people buying beach places today are government union people, like firemen.
1) excellent wages and benefits
2) nearly impregnable job security
3) gold plated retirement
I forgot 4)
plenty of time off for moonlighting and potential double dip pension
However you want to spin what you calling BS....http://sweetness-light.com/archive/fed-workers-earn-double-private-sector
so retired bus drivers will be swinging next to ex-members of Congress after the next revolution?
Firemen pay is also removed from all market forces.
Firemen jobs have always been a dream job in America, they have to beat off the crowds of applicants with sticks and that has always been true, yet the compensation is as though they are trying to find people to take a job that no one wants.
Hit the link provided for more of the “naive” stuff, kkthx. =.=
I know it is fashionable as hell to bash government employees, but when I hired on with the California DOT in 1984, I don’t remember it being all peaches & cream.
I spent all of high school studying instead of cutting classes and chatting.
My engineering curriculum at UC Davis had 15 elective credits, to the 60 credits some majors had.
So in 1984 I signed on for starting pay well below starting pay for private engineers, while my classmates who went private all berated me for my low salary and bragged about the killings they made in their Fidelity Magellan accounts.
In 2003, our engineer union got a “catch up” added to our salaries that boosted my salary by 40% over a 4 year time span to 2007. I got one year of that 40% enriched full check
You private people will look with lust at the 40% raise I got over a 4 year periodm 2004-2008. All I see is that I was working 40% below rate for 21 years. So you think I am on the gravy train, while I know I was underpaid for 21 of my 25 year career as a California DOT engineer.
All of this assumes I am actually a good engineer and work hard, which I am sure nobody believes on this forum.
Funny that I knew a solid dozen Senior level engineers who all jumped to private firms in 2002 after working for 40% below average engineer pay for 15-20 years, and “unexpectedly”, none has returned. This includes my supervisor on the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge retrofit project who religiously worked 12 hour days M-F, and most Saturdays, even though he was in a position with set salary that paid no overtime.
Gee, how can it be none of these leeching dregs were fired by their private comanies? Were they lobotomized to suddenly work hard in private industry when they were just shovel-leavning dregs for 15-20 years.
I get a great set pension which is 2% of my pay after 30 years at 55 years of age (where people are getting that most of us retire with 100% pay at 50 years old, I have no clue!) and that with the job security is what attracted me back in 1984.
Now, do you remember that 40% catch up raise I mentioned? Well, those retirees who retired between 1984 and 2003, they didn’t get that catch up raise. That means they were retiring with say a 60% pension, but on a montly paycheck 40% lower than paid to the average engineer. So they weren’t earning 60% of average pay for a pension - they were earning 36% of average pay (0.60 x 0.60 = 0.36).
When somebody retires at 80% payscale and that payscale is 40% low, they are getting 80% of 60% of what they would have been getting. You do the math. I’m an engineer and good at math so I’ll do it: .80 x .60 - 48% of that average pay, even though they are getting 80% of their old check.
I’m sure I’ve lost most people by now.
Government employees don’t have company cars, for the most part. Government employees don’t get year end bonuses. Government emplyees don’t get company-paid 3 martini lunches. Government employees don’t get expense accounts. Government employees don’t get 401(k) matching funds up to 50% that USED TO BE common in the private sector from 1982 through 2007.
I appreciate all the government hate on this site and I think it is healthy to question everything government does, including how much it pays employees in pay and benefits. At the same time, being ignorant of the real details doesn’t give you any appreciattion for the facts.
Do your own homework. Get your own facts. I am not underpaid anymore, and for all I know I am overpaid. Certainly, I am WAAAAAAAAAY overpaid for the tiny cow town I live in where unemployment is high. I was WAAAAAAAAY underpaid when I was living in downtown San Francisco for 12 years while assisting to oversee the construction or retrofit of 4 regional bridges. The state pays all of its people one flat rate for each pay class and if you live in big cities, you get pretty much screwed. If you live in the stix, that same pay is like making a killing.
This is yet another factor that many here have not considered. How many government workers are there in the dense urban cities where the cost of living is very high vs in flyover country? That is another reason bureaucrat pay is so high.
When the bulk of your California state employees are in big cities in the coast, you have to pay more to keep from losing them altogether than if they were living in the low cost outback. Then people compare that pay to the pay of the millions of people living in very low cost/low paying rural areas.
There is way more to comparing pay than just x vs y.
This is what the liberals do when they say women are underpaid and don’t consider the millions of dangerous back-breaking jobs women generally don’t apply for.
Don’t fall in the same trap comparing public/private pay. There are plenty of abuses of government employee pay and corruption without disregarding the truth about employee pay.
Just saying.
Once Obama is finished the middle class and government employees will be synonymous. The rest of us will be the working class and the few elite.
Give me details.
What does a private laywer earn in downtown Manhattan?
What does a federal lawyer earn in downtown Manhattan?
what does a private doctor earn in downtown San Francisco?
What does a federal doctor earn in downtown San Francisco?
what does a private short order cook earn in Waco Texas?
What does a federal short order cook earn in Waco Texas, if you can find one?
You may be right that government pay is excessive. But you can’t prove it, can you? You can’t look at two comparable jobs in the same area and compare the two salaries directly.
That is the “BS” in the data you linked to.
This is the same thing as comparing the average professional female sports salary to the average male professional sports salary and saying “Male athletes make 100 time more than female athletes”.
True on the face of it, but why7.
So it is true that the average check cashed by a federal employee is double the average check cashed by a private worker.
Did you stop to consider that there are no Coffee shop employees, chamber maids, gas station clerks, lawn mowers, dog walkers, baby sitters... I could go on all day.
You CAN’T take all private job classifications in America, many of them at minimum wage because they are completely unskilled jobs, and then compare them to someone with an Environmental Planning degree writing reports to comply with idiotic federal EPA laws. It just doens’t work that way.
Most government employees are white collar jobs. How about comparing all government white collar jobs to all private white collar jobs? That would at least be closer to an apples-to-apples comparison.
So if you still believe federal workers are paid double private workers, please post up the low and high payscale for at least 20 different white collar occupations, both government and private. If you ever bothered to do so, you would see that this lie that a federal lawyer makes double a private lawyer is just what I said, it is BS.
Yeah, I know, that article is a tough read..... just as doing a little research yourself.... =.=
I’m sorry. I must have missed where you posted the pay scales for comparable government vs private employees, illustrating that government employees earn double what private employees do.
Here’s another factoid for you. The AVERAGE monthly pension check sent out to all California state worker retires is $24,000 per year. Who wants to be a millionaire?
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