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The state of Illinois will likely be the 1st state to file for bankrupcy. Illinois is just the most extreme example of Government Gone Wild. This article highlights what some IL workers make. They have over 110,000 state workers making $100,000+/yr., some off of pensions!
Governments all across the USA are gorging themselves full of taxpayer cash, & taxpayers are unaware. It's dispicable!
Who is monitoring what gov't hacks pay themselves? Voters don't have the info they need to vote wisely. It's near impossible to get to it. Have you tried?
Do you have any idea what your County Mgr makes? What your State Comptroller's pension is? What your city's School Distric Super's salary is, or how many weeks of vacation they get?
Did you know it's common for gov't workers to carry forward unused sick days & vacation days year after year? When they retire, some have 300+ days accrued. They get paid for those unused days at their current (highest) pay rate, rather than the pay rate they had, when those days were earned.
If you knew how many sick + vacation days the top brass in your County get, it would make you ill. If you knew the terms of their pensions...you'd puke.
A former County Manager of mine took early retirement. We had to pay him $1.2M! It only became public, when a local newspaper did an expose on it. The newspapers' writer described what they had to do to get access to the records, & how long it took...none of us would have made it to the finish line, and attained those records. The media have leverage we don't, and it took them months.
We must take back our governments, or our country will collapse under their weight. Job #1 is to force comp plan transparency so anyone can get access to the records quickly. The top gov't execs comp plans should be made public. Our local newspapers should be doing expose's on it. Not just the salary's either....ALL of it...their employment contracts, health benefits, pension details, vacation + sick days, ect..
It's not the rank & file gov't folks...its the ones in the fancy offices. Have you ever been inside your School Districts Admin building? Check out the top floor some time...if you can get in
When was the last time you saw an article in your local newspaper about this? Reporters know how tough it is to get the info, & how long it takes, so they don't even try.
This is a big part of why people are fleeing IL, CA, NY, NJ, CN, & other states & cities...its government run amuck. I left too. My property taxes were nearing $10k/year, so I left Gwinnett County GA...& that was a conservative county. Imagine Essex County New Jersey
It's like that across the country. There is inequality between government employees and private employees. Take holidays, for example. Government workers get ML, Columbus, Chavez (CA), President, Veteran days off. Private company employees get none of those. Are they not American citizens too? Why does one group of Americans get those holidays and the other group does not? You are a second-class citizen if you don't work for the government.
To the OP, not all citizens are unsuspecting but it's hard to fight the system. Public unions, flushed with taxpayer money, spend huge sum of money to put their people in political office. Once in office, those politicians return the favors by giving more money to their public union bosses. The cycle of corruption is hard to break. Don't count on the court to help either, because judges are public employees who benefit from the corruption too.
Massachusetts is a notable one for this. They pay out $5.44 billion in pensions every year.
Each year the Boston Herald publishes the state payroll for every employee. This year, 49 out of the top 50 paid employees work for the University of Massachusetts. The highest was paid made over $1 million last year. That is a taxpayer funded school. And people like Elizabeth Warren claim the reason higher education is so expensive is student loans. What a load of crap.
I commend the Boston Herald. Every newspaper should do the same. It opened my eyes. Transparency is 1/2 the problem, the lack of initiative is the other half. Most of us are too busy to deal with fixing it, and politicians are not going to do it since they benefit from it.
davidt1 makes a good point about the public service unions. I'm for outlawing them. Gov't workers, or their reps, should not be deterimining gov't comp packages. It should be done by non-gov't taxpayer boards made up of peeps from both parties.
If we don't solve this, it will take down America eventually. I can see a taxpayer revolution on the horizon since now only ~45% are paying federal income taxes...we are in the minority, so now the 55% can vote for tax increases w/o resistance. Its like voting yourself a pay raise...who wouldn't do that?
The state of Illinois will likely be the 1st state to file for bankrupcy. Illinois is just the most extreme example of Government Gone Wild. This article highlights what some IL workers make. They have over 110,000 state workers making $100,000+/yr., some off of pensions!
Governments all across the USA are gorging themselves full of taxpayer cash, & taxpayers are unaware. It's dispicable!
Who is monitoring what gov't hacks pay themselves? Voters don't have the info they need to vote wisely. It's near impossible to get to it. Have you tried?
Do you have any idea what your County Mgr makes? What your State Comptroller's pension is? What your city's School Distric Super's salary is, or how many weeks of vacation they get?
Did you know it's common for gov't workers to carry forward unused sick days & vacation days year after year? When they retire, some have 300+ days accrued. They get paid for those unused days at their current (highest) pay rate, rather than the pay rate they had, when those days were earned.
If you knew how many sick + vacation days the top brass in your County get, it would make you ill. If you knew the terms of their pensions...you'd puke.
A former County Manager of mine took early retirement. We had to pay him $1.2M! It only became public, when a local newspaper did an expose on it. The newspapers' writer described what they had to do to get access to the records, & how long it took...none of us would have made it to the finish line, and attained those records. The media have leverage we don't, and it took them months.
We must take back our governments, or our country will collapse under their weight. Job #1 is to force comp plan transparency so anyone can get access to the records quickly. The top gov't execs comp plans should be made public. Our local newspapers should be doing expose's on it. Not just the salary's either....ALL of it...their employment contracts, health benefits, pension details, vacation + sick days, ect..
It's not the rank & file gov't folks...its the ones in the fancy offices. Have you ever been inside your School Districts Admin building? Check out the top floor some time...if you can get in
When was the last time you saw an article in your local newspaper about this? Reporters know how tough it is to get the info, & how long it takes, so they don't even try.
This is a big part of why people are fleeing IL, CA, NY, NJ, CN, & other states & cities...its government run amuck. I left too. My property taxes were nearing $10k/year, so I left Gwinnett County GA...& that was a conservative county. Imagine Essex County New Jersey
Me too. I wish that I have a government job just as the OP wishes.
You know. With sick days, vacation days, pension, and working with fine people.
I'd love to see a law where the highest-paid public official is the president of the country and no public official/employee can receive more than the president - and that includes all benefits, health insurance, car allowance, overtime, hazard pay etc. Make all pensions half of that or less.
Then make the salary of the president the same as the average gross income in the USA - multiplied by 5 or 6, evaluated every 2nd year in office, depending on the economy.
And if you can't survive on a salary 5 times more than the average, the mafia might have openings for you.
It's like that across the country. There is inequality between government employees and private employees. Take holidays, for example. Government workers get ML, Columbus, Chavez (CA), President, Veteran days off. Private company employees get none of those. Are they not American citizens too? Why does one group of Americans get those holidays and the other group does not? You are a second-class citizen if you don't work for the government.
To the OP, not all citizens are unsuspecting but it's hard to fight the system. Public unions, flushed with taxpayer money, spend huge sum of money to put their people in political office. Once in office, those politicians return the favors by giving more money to their public union bosses. The cycle of corruption is hard to break. Don't count on the court to help either, because judges are public employees who benefit from the corruption too.
I get those days off (except Chavez), I work in the private sector.
Why blame the gov for the private sector not giving these days off?
Government employees should not be making more than private sector. Government is full of incompetent diversity hires.
Interesting...
Why you think this?
What is the going rate for a private sector FBI agent?
Or a private sector Navy SEAL?
Or the thousands of other positions with no private sector equivalent?
Also, how does someone recruit the best if they are not allowed to be competitive? You want people working for the CIA, DARPA, even handling your SS benefits, to be substandard?
What is the going rate for a private sector FBI agent?
Or a private sector Navy SEAL?
Or the thousands of other positions with no private sector equivalent?
Also, how does someone recruit the best if they are not allowed to be competitive? You want people working for the CIA, DARPA, even handling your SS benefits, to be substandard?
LOL. Some of the people I know who got hired for the state barely graduated college. If you belong to a certain groups, you are in. Please spare us with the BS. Didn't you say you work for the private sector? Why the fanatic defense of the status quo? Only a public employee would do that.
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