EDITED Who are America's fastest-growing class of millionaires? They are police officers, firefighters, teachers and federal bureaucrats, who, unless things change drastically, will be paid something near their full salaries every year--until death--after retiring in their mid-50s....a retirement sum worth millions.
Based on a realistic 4% return, an $80,000 annual pension payout with full health benefits implies a large pot of money--$2 million, to be precise.
That $2 million also happens to be the implied booty of your average California policeman who retires at age 55........in Carlsbad, Cali, the average firefighter or police officer typically retires at age 55 and has 28 years of service w/ an annual city pension of $76,440 for life. SOURCE http://www.forbes.com/
NOTE Vallejo, CA firemen make 200K a year---not including benefits and perks PLUS the inevitable lifetime pensions and eternal Cadillac family benefits.
“Public Servants”? I agree that fire, police and utility emergency workers are public servants. People who sit in an office all day and push paper around are not public servants, they are on a government payroll. A major difference, which seems to elude the headline writer.
(New York) State put freeze on hiring, then added 51,464 people
And be sure to check out the price tag.
The truth is that some federal employees are grossly overpaid. Others are underpaid.
The trick is paring down the overpaid while retaining the underpaid.
A far easier road to take would be to cut the areas of the fed gov that do not have a valid reason to exist. (probably more than 50% of agencies have no Constitutional basis)
Then, when the fedgov public sector unions have been greatly reduced the pay situation can be normalized to the prevailing private sector rates for each job type.
Probably about half of government employees actually do useful work. The others are just taking advantage of taxpayers and our country would be better off if their jobs were eliminated and they were forced to actually do something useful that benefits society.
I can't wait until the Pubs have majorities in both Houses and the Presidency. We're going to slash your pensions....
in the privacy of their paneled boardrooms you just know the people running these unions are absolutely freaking out!
So, let me see if I've got this straight: the private sector (Wall Street), which is simply an extension of the private citizenry (for the most part), from which you confiscate the money you use to pay yourselves (with incredible, expensive, lifetime benefits which most of the private sector do not enjoy), is responsible for this economic "problem", and therefore, only the private sector should suffer, while you continue taking your hefty benefits at their expense?
These people are like a tick that has drained the last drop of blood from it's host, and then blames the dead animal because it has no more blood to drink.
Too many government workers believe that no matter how bad the economy is for the general public, they are too special to go without. These are the people we need to starve out.
The main difference between these "public servants" and hogs at a trough is, when the hogs retire...you eat them.
"Public employee" numbers (do-nothing bureaucrats and shovel-leaners)in most levels of government, could be slashed by at least 80%, with no noticeable disruption in service.
First, many if not most agencies need to be eliminated, and the departments of the executive branch seriously scrutinized.
The upcoming TEApublican government needs to develop a "quick-eval" system where the actual government workers are allowed to vote the deadbeats "off the island".
Reform/removal especially should include redundant mid-level management and dept/agency heads.
This should be a secretive operation with private sector moles place throughout to be "a fly on the wall". Evaluation votes should be secret ballot, to be reviewed by private sector professionals.
Temporary outside auditors should be paid a bounty for each worthless drone they out.
Remember, many if not most of these leaches got there through patronage.
Jeez, guys. The Federal retirement system was reformed back in the 80s. They pay into their own system and into social security now and have been doing so for 25 years. Now, I’m not easy on them because they are underworked and most govt jobs are useless. But the retirement benefits are not out of line with the private sector.
The major scandal besides the over-hiring is the false classification of jobs at levels higher than the comparable public sector jobs. Govt paper-pushers will get classified as senior execs when they are nothing but file clerks.
Only an outside audit can clean up the mess because the higher you go in the govt the more corrupt and incompetent the personnel. It’s too corrupt to fix itself.
I think in the hail of gunfire that is being fired here, we are overlooking something. To me, laziness and incompetence of some goverment employees is far less of a problem, than hard working competent employees implementing bad laws and regulations. Wouldn’t it be great if the FCC was too lazy, incompetent, and apathetic to promulgate internet regulations? Or Congress was too lazy and imcompetent to work hard through the holidays to destroy our country, as they have been doing?
I’ll take a lazy overpaid government employee any day over a hard working fascist who earns his pay. A lazy Congress is a good Congress, any day they are NOT in session is a great day for Freedom.