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I live in Northern Virginia and I can attest that the work the federal employees do is extremely important and benefits the entire country. It is so important and they are worth 6-figures.
This isn't Victorian England. Most American "upper-class" started as "working-class" but took a chance and worked hard to build a business. Or they started as "middle-class" and studied hard in school and worked hard to build a career.
The myth the left tries to perpetrate is that Americans are either one of the "1%" (Paris Hilton sipping fine wine while lying back on her yacht that she was given when she was 16 as she and her friends laugh at the poor dockworkers) or the "99%" (noble, hard-working abused "real people" just trying to feed their kids but struggling because the evil rich folks literally are trying to strip every "real person" of every single right, benefit or opportunity to raise their family).
I'll never understand why the left hates success and wealth but celebrates mediocrity, decay, entitlement and inefficiency.
How can these people hold Cuba and Greece up as shining examples that America should aspire to?
And the idea that a person who has just lost his job should be hit with a tax increase so that public workers can continue to receive automatic pay increases (without the requirement of automatic quality of service increases for the public, of course) is particularly gross.
The narrative that the top earners, whose real income gains were 300% since 1979 when most workers were stagnant, was do to hard work and education isn't confirmed by the data.
Rising inequality isn't at all about education. This CBO report drives home that, that view is all wrong. The big increase has come from gains at the very top.
For comparison, here’s some data on wages of men by education:
If education was the driving factor, you would see huge gains for those with more education. But what do we see? Even those with advanced degrees only saw a 35% gain while the top 1% gained nearly 300%.
On your other point " that a person who has just lost his job should be hit with a tax increase so that public workers can continue to receive automatic pay increases" -- I don't see where that is even true. People that lost his jobs aren't being hit with a tax increase.
On my previous point about inequality, this is a recent phenomena, occurring only in the last three decades. If the big gains at the top was because of hard work and education, that implies that the top 1% have in the last 30 years been smarter than the top group in previous generations. I see no evidence that there has been a jump in smartness at the top.
People act as if federal employees are breaking the bank. My wife (a GS-14 with almost 20 years of federal service) sure as hell ain't getting rich. She hasn't had a performance bonus in well over 5 years and i think it's been much longer. She's had several pay freezes over the years and on a few occasions she's had her promotions held up. Not to mention that she could've made far more as a contractor over the last 10 years....at least DOUBLE her pay as a Fed. It seems like her medical benefits go up 7 or 8 percent every damn year.
Feds that are even lower on the scale are faring no better and often times worse.
People act as if federal employees are breaking the bank. My wife (a GS-14 with almost 20 years of federal service) sure as hell ain't getting rich. She hasn't had a performance bonus in well over 5 years and i think it's been much longer. She's had several pay freezes over the years and on a few occasions she's had her promotions held up. Not to mention that she could've made far more as a contractor over the last 10 years....at least DOUBLE her pay as a Fed. It seems like her medical benefits go up 7 or 8 percent every damn year.
Feds that are even lower on the scale are faring no better and often times worse.
People are generally just ignorant. They hear federal employees and they just assume TSA workers....
Well obviously yes... but that wasn't your original argument as you kept moving the goalposts. Personally I would love to see a reduction in federal employees. The catch being it will hurt us in the short run and be good for the long run.
In the chart below, the first number is for the federal workforce (the number includes all three branches, the Post Office, and the military); the second is the population.
In the last 40 years, the total federal workforce has been reduced by 1.6 million workers, while during the same period, the population of the country has increased by more than 105 million.
When we're talking about a workforce that large, I'm sure that there's some waste and some duplication of effort, and some positions could be eliminated. On the other hand, a significantly smaller workforce is now performing the work and providing the services of more federal agencies and for a significantly larger population. Thank God for computers, right?
In the chart below, the first number is for the federal workforce (the number includes all three branches, the Post Office, and the military); the second is the population.
In the last 40 years, the total federal workforce has been reduced by 1.6 million workers, while during the same period, the population of the country has increased by more than 105 million.
When we're talking about a workforce that large, I'm sure that there's some waste and some duplication of effort, and some positions could be eliminated. On the other hand, a significantly smaller workforce is now performing the work and providing the services of more federal agencies and for a significantly larger population. Thank God for computers, right?
Is it wrong to fire workers with poor work ethic during a recession?
Is it wrong to fire workers with poor work ethic during a recession?
#1) YOU don't know anything about the "work ethic" of the people laid off. These are INDIVIDUALS - not statistics.
#2) Putting more people in the unemployment line during a recession is not terribly bright if your goal is to put people back to work - for one thing it removes money from the economy thus costing OTHER people their jobs (government workers spend money just like everyone else), and for another - while it cuts government salary costs it ADDS to government unemployment role costs so the savings to the government at not nearly what you may expect.
Ken
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