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Welcome To The Third World, Part 16: The Best Jobs Are Now In Government

Years (actually decades) ago I lived in a New York University grad student dorm that housed mostly elite kids from other countries. Sons of African finance ministers, daughters of European bankers, that kind of thing. And the developing-world students all told the same story: Back home, people who wanted to get rich went into government while people who wanted to struggle with arbitrary regulation and excessive taxes went into business. It was clear to them who the first and second-class citizens were.

One of the things they loved about the US was the fact that it was different here. Entrepreneurs were the highest-order life form and government was the support staff.

But those days are apparently over. From last week’s Wall Street Journal:

The Sweet Gig of Being a Bureaucrat

Here’s a story that is emblematic of life in Washington, D.C.: The Department of Veterans Affairs—a well-known sinkhole of mismanagement—handed out more than $142 million in bonuses last year. Taxpayers stumbling across this news might have been surprised by these rewards for bureaucratic incompetence, and perhaps they also got the sense that working for the federal government is a sweet gig. They’re right.

A review of the nation’s capital turns up ample evidence: In a report released last month, Cato Institute budget analyst Chris Edwardscalculated that the average federal employee earned $84,153 in 2014—roughly 50% more than the average worker in the private economy. When you include benefits like health care and pensions, the average federal worker’s compensation rises to $119,934—nearly 80% higher than everyone else. “The federal government has become an elite island of secure and high-paid employment,” Mr. Edwards wrote, “separated from the ocean of average Americans competing in the economy.”

Pay for federal employees has grown significantly faster than for private employees. The percentage difference between the two has doubled in the past 25 years. Federal work is more lucrative than the average jobs in finance, information and professional fields.

Moreover, the number of federal employees salaried at more than $100,000 has grown by nearly 10% in the past five years, to more than 300,000. The 1,000 best-paid federal workers make a minimum of $216,000, with most of the highest echelon working at Veterans Affairs. Employees of little-known agencies such as the National Credit Union Administration and the Farm Credit Administration also top the list. The total cost to taxpayers of federal wages and benefits clocks in at $260 billion. Much of this is concentrated in and around Washington, D.C.—and it shows. Six of the 10 richest counties in the country surround the nation’s capital, according to the Census Bureau. The median household income in these counties ranges from about $98,000 to $118,000, excluding benefits.

It is nearly impossible to get fired from a job in D.C. A 2011 analysis by USA Today found that at many federal agencies—the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, among others—you’re more likely to die on the job than lose it. Thankfully, there’s no waste, fraud or redundancy in the federal government, right?

Now compare the plush life of the bureaucrat with that of the average American. The median household income in September hovered a little above $56,000. That is only 1% higher than in 2009 when the recession officially ended, and 0.5% lower than before the recession began. Meanwhile, consumer prices increased 10.6% over the past six years. Small wonder that 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a January analysis by Bankrate.com.

Yet Washington’s success has no doubt contributed to America’s troubles. The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that last year the ever-growing regulatory burden cost $1.88 trillion. This translates into about $15,000 a household. No one is spared from these hidden taxes, which lead to higher prices on everyday goods, fewer jobs, slower growth and more.

In other words, Washington, D.C., strides ahead while the rest of America falls further behind. The $142 million in bonuses at Veterans Affairs are only the latest reminder.

How did the public sector end up subjugating the private sector? Mostly through the following:

Globalization. What at first glance looks like the most capitalist, pro-private-sector policy imaginable ended up having the most powerful pro-government impact. As CEOs figured out that they could close domestic factories, ship the jobs to China, write off the cost of the transition and thereby increase net profits (and their own year-end bonus), US manufacturing was gutted, wages declined and pensions disappeared. Formerly-unionized workers fell from middle class to working poor.

Public sector unions. It’s important to note that even FDR, the patron saint of active government, thought public sector unions were a bad idea. Some relevant quotes:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.

The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.

The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters…The pay is fixed by Congress and the workmen are represented by the members of Congress in the fixing of Government pay.

But in 1961 President John Kennedy granted federal workers the right to bargain over working conditions (though not pay), and the rest is history. Public sector unions have since become a huge political force, campaigning for and frequently electing the people who set their pay and other perks. No surprise, then, that public sector salaries and especially pensions have soared and are now, as Chicago just learned, untouchable even under threat of municipal bankruptcy.

The printing press. Another of those “exactly what you’d expect” events was the 1971 conversion of the dollar from gold-backed to pure fiat currency. Thereafter Washington could create as much new currency as it wanted and never again had to prioritize. Naturally, federal hiring soared, pay rose, and public sector unions, in a classic positive feedback loop, got progressively better at obtaining more of the same.

Add it all up, and government, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is now where the cushy jobs are.

But of course this is a temporary condition. When government comes to dominate an economy, the engine of wealth creation (that is, private capital) goes on strike and society enters a downward spiral in which unemployed private sector workers demand more government aid, requiring the government to raise taxes and/or create more currency, until the old system collapses and everyone, public and private, finds themselves in a Third World nightmare. See Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, and — let’s face it — much of Europe.

29 thoughts on "Welcome To The Third World, Part 16: The Best Jobs Are Now In Government"

  1. It depends which government jobs you are talking about. Texas state pay, unless you are one of the over paid administrators such as a public university system, is not that great. However, you do get actual sick leave and time off. Of course, there are some government jobs you don’t want like a facilities manager or a city manager. If you work in consulting engineering, I can bet that a number of them are really government jobs of some sort whether local, state, or federal.

    I’m doubtful of this lack of qualified workers. I see jobs for engineers but none want to offer training even if you have the aptitude shown in a previous job. If you are not a ‘purple’ unicorn, it is kind of hard to get hired.

  2. My experience is government jobs are semi-retirement. If you can stand doing little or nothing for hours/days at a time, it’s for you. A healthy work ethic is a disability.

  3. Government is a mob style protection, extortion racket, organized to fleece the public. Government has the power and business has the money.

  4. “the average federal employee earned $84,153 in 2014—roughly 50% more
    than the average worker in the private economy. When you include
    benefits like health care and pensions, the average federal worker’s
    compensation rises to $119,934—nearly 80% higher than everyone else.”

    You do realize you’re comparing apples and oranges here, right? Education and experience levels of government employees are much, much higher than the average across the entire private sector. Most low-end positions (janitor, groundskeeper, etc. etc.) are contracted out, and not included/diluting average federal salaries. Geographically, fed employees are clustered in high-cost-of-living areas – DC, Huntsville AL, etc. Within those regions, private sector salaries are higher as well.

    Finally… an earlier poster noted that in the ’90s feds were castigated as too stupid to find better employment. Now that private sector wages are flat or falling and job security is a thing of the past, the government employees don’t look so stupid anymore. So get over it.

  5. I disagree that the best jobs are in government. the ONLY jobs are in government. but unfortunately, contrary to this article, most of those jobs are bureaucratic. which is fine if you’re predisposed to be a bureaucrat. but if you’re not a bureaucrat and, say, a scientist, well it’s not such a great gig. because even scientists in the gov’t are managed and administered by bureaucrats. and then even the job of a scientist (fundamental to any civilization) mostly becomes bureaucratic. and as far as pay, it’s true that government employees probably make more than comparable jobs in the private sector. but when you consider variables like child support, differences in pay between a bureaucrat at the top of your chain-of-command and a scientist at the bottom, cost of education, etc… a scientist with a PhD who would’ve made six digits thirty years ago is more likely to make way less than any bureaucrat in his/her chain-of-command and in many cases less than someone making minimum wage outside the gov’t. gov’ts don’t promote the most educated, qualified and experienced but instead promote the most politically expedient and those who perpetuate a politically correct narrative. meaning that the less education, the less experience and the fewer qualifications a gov’t employee has, the more likely s/he is to be promoted. I’ve been working in the gov’t for twenty years and with it for thirty, the probability of a conscientious employee advancing is limited at best. certainly, if an employee wants to actually work and produce something instead of just checking off a box, then s/he won’t advance. so I get a little annoyed by people anywhere who make generalizations about gov’t employees. I’ve been in my career thirty years and on average take home way less than minimum wage. that’s what happens when gov’t takes everything over. following is an accurate description of what’s happened to gov’t and everything gov’t has taken over…

    1/61 Feminism is a hate movement characterized by women manipulating the public with the spectacle of their chronic victimhood and authoritarians acquiesce by persecuting, enslaving, impoverishing, imprisoning and exterminating responsible, honest and hard-working men in exchange for votes, money and absolute power

    2/61 Condemning feminists is not the same as condemning women or hatred of women (misogyny) but is condemning a primitive and uncivilized form of social organization founded upon hating, enslaving and exterminating men (misandry)

    3/61 Feminists are psychopaths and (a) lack conscience, empathy, remorse, shame and guilt, (b) demonstrate no analytical skills or logic, (c) are glib, insincere and disingenuous, (d) are solipsistic, parasitic, opportunistic, manipulative, deceitful and duplicitous, (e) are irresponsible and blame others for the consequences of their own behavior, (f) lie compulsively and pathologically, (g) are short-sighted and unable to plan ahead, (h) have an inflated sense of entitlement, (i) demonstrate no agency, (j) are hypocrites and believe the rules apply to everyone except them, (k) contribute nothing for solution to problems except telling others what to do, (l) make themselves look good by making others look bad, (m) are uncivilized animals and depend upon constant affirmation by others of their existence, (n) are authoritarian and demonstrate no independent thought, (o) interpret complaint about their crimes as evidence of their success in oppressing others which only encourages them to impose more, (p) persecute those who object or refuse to cooperate with their crimes, and (q) demonstrate childish and primitive defense mechanisms

    4/61 Women are allowed to vote presently, have agency and must be held responsible and accountable for their choices so don’t blame laws, courts, governments, culture, hormones, circumstances, stress, men or anything else for the choices women make

    5/61 States, family courts and their officers, officers for agencies of Child Support Enforcement, Guardians ad Litum, representatives of the Divorce Industry, case workers for Child Protective Services, feminists, the Legal Lobby, other special interest groups, and many others encourage mothers, other women and feminists to make false allegations of domestic violence, rape, child abuse and other crimes against innocent men

    6/61 Women are responsible for most domestic violence, child abuse, rape and many other crimes but most of those who have been accused of, charged for, convicted of and punished for all these crimes are men (this from myriad scientific manuscripts by scholars including Drs Daniel Whitaker of the Center for Disease Control and Murray Straus from the Univ of NH, PASK, the US Dept of Justice, the Heritage Foundation and other official and authoritative sources)

    7/61 Remember The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

    8/61 During the past forty-six years in the US, more than forty-million children have been separated forcibly from more than twenty-five-million fathers, more than half those instances rationalized by false allegations of domestic violence, rape and child abuse against the men (see PASK, the US Dept of Public Health and Human Services, Taken into Custody: America’s War Against Fathers, Children and the Family by Dr Stephen Baskerville, and many other official and authoritative sources)

    9/61 During the past fifty years, more than one-third of adult women in the US have defrauded criminally an innocent man using just the one mechanism of divorce and child support but during the fifty years prior almost no men divorced their wives, collected child support from them and/or denied them access to their children (see the US Dept of the Census, the US Dept of Public Health and Human Services, the Heritage Foundation and many other official and authoritative sources)

    10/61 There are many other legal, political, social and financial mechanisms by which women defraud men criminally (VAWA and Title IX for instance permit women to make false allegations against innocent men with impunity and with no evidence, denying men their fundamental rights to due process)

    11/61 After fathers and children have been separated forcibly, states award custody to mothers, order fathers to pay child support exceeding cost of raising the children by many multiples and that which fathers should and can pay by many multiples more and then exchange the child support and federal subsidies attached to laws like VAWA and Title IV-D with mothers, other women and feminists for votes and absolute power (see Taken into Custody: America’s War on Fathers, Children and the Family and many articles by Dr Stephen Baskerville, The Law and Economics of Child Support Payments by Dr William Comanor and excellent chapters and other articles by Dr Sanford Braver, and many other official and authoritative sources)

    12/61 Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s but my children don’t belong to Caesar

    13/61 Women manipulate public with the spectacle of their chronic victimhood and authoritarians acquiesce by persecuting, enslaving, impoverishing, imprisoning and exterminating honest, hard-working and responsible men in exchange for votes, money, political expedience and absolute power

    14/61 This dynamic inspired Benjamin Franklin approximately 260 yrs ago to write: “Those who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither security nor liberty.”

    15/61 Feminists use absolute power to broadcast propaganda and lies that they have greater need for health care even though science and facts show that more men die and die earlier than women of all leading causes of mortality except breast cancer (support for this fact can be found almost anywhere)

    16/61 For example, feminists (including representatives of the Nat’l Organization for Women) lied to Congress that more funding needs to be directed to study of cardiovascular disease among women because more women than men die of it after the age of sixty-five, omitting the simple and obvious facts that most people who die of cardiovascular disease are men before the age of sixty-five and that the only reason more women suffer from cardiovascular disease after the age of sixty-five is that most men are already dead and women outlive men by more than six years, which supports the need for more funding of cardiovascular disease (and almost all other agents of mortality) among men and not women

    17/61 There are two parts of every lie: the evil people who tell it and all the stupid people who believe it no matter how obvious it is because they profit from it

    18/61 With those lies, women and feminists coerce legislators to appropriate more financial resources to their life-style choices, giving them more access to unnecessary health care at the preclusion of access for men to much needed real health care

    19/61 Because women represent a large and growing majority of the population and electorate, Legislators oblige women and feminists with budgets for health care which exceed that of men by many multiples, stealing funds from men to pay for it (like through child support and other almost-exclusively male taxes and mandates) and precluding men from access to needed health care

    20/61 As a result of this dynamic, women live more than six years longer than men, have higher standards of living, consume way more resources and receive disproportionately more public assistance from programs to which they contributed disproportionately less

    21/61 Governments throughout the United States celebrate Men’s Health Month in June with public broadcasts like one at http://www.foh.hhs.gov/dbdmarketing/MHM/MHM which advise that “Men’s Health Month exists to alert, inspire, and educate men to realize that the most important thing they can do is take responsibility for themselves so they can be there to care for those they love.” or at http://foh.hhs.gov/calendar/june.html which advises men to “MAN UP” because “Men face unique health challenges and one of the most dangerous may be their reluctance to seek health care.”

    22/61 The ones men love are not more important than the men themselves because men can’t help others if they can’t help themselves, the health of men is not important only if it is of service to others as examples of shameless agitprop imply and the crisis of health care among men is not a consequence of choice by men more than it is the product of circumstances imposed upon them about which they have no choices and for which they have no political, social, legal or financial recourse

    23/61 The US incarcerates more men per capita than any other country in the history of the world except for Nazi Germany during war-time and Stalinist Russia, women represent less than five-percent of inmates and women receive much shorter sentences for the same crimes (see the US Dept of Justice, Depts of Corrections and many other official and authoritative sources)

    24/61 Women are responsible for most domestic violence, child abuse, spousal homicide and many other crimes but receive shorter sentences for the same crimes if they are sentenced at all

    25/61 Many innocent men are in prison because they were accused falsely by women of crimes like rape and domestic violence and initiatives like the Innocence Project have exonerated more than three-hundred men after an average of thirteen years in prison

    26/61 Adequate resources to exonerate and release all innocent men from prison do not exist because the number of innocent men in prison is estimated in the hundreds of thousands and it is easier to find enough people to bear false witness against an innocent man than it is to prove his innocence

    27/61 More than fifty-thousand men are in prison because they can’t afford to comply with orders for excessive child support and ten-percent of them have never fathered a child (this number is a conservative estimate and an exact figure is unavailable because governments are obfuscating the actual reasons for incarceration in an effort to cover up rapid expansion of debtor’s prisons which were outlawed by President John Adams more than two-hundred years ago)

    28/61 Almost all fathers have and continue to support their children the best they can, the only time they can’t is when mothers and governments interfere, almost all of the infinitessimally small number who deliberately refuse have been alienated from their children, and the entire concept of a “dead-beat dad” is nothing but feminist propaganda, lies and a myth

    29/61 “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” – Lord Polonius (Hamlet by William Shakespeare)

    30/61 “Never spend your money before you have earned it.” – Thomas Jefferson

    31/61 During the past ten years, mothers for ten-percent of children do not know who the fathers are but identify him correctly on a birth certificate, mothers for ten-percent of children do not know who the fathers are and don’t identify him correctly on a birth certificate (which is paternity fraud) and mothers for fifteen-percent of children don’t even identify a father on a birth certificate (this from myriad scientific manuscripts concerning genetic marker analyses and the research by many scholars including Dr Ned Holstein who administers The National Parents Organization)

    32/61 In direct response to false allegations of domestic violence, child abuse and rape, imposition and oppression by family courts and agencies of child support enforcement, impoverishment and enslavement, denial of passports with which to escape their persecutors and denial of public assistance, more than 300,000 fathers have committed suicide in the US during the past forty-six years (see the US Dept of Mental health, the the Nat’l Institute for Suicide Prevention and many other official and authoritative sources)

    33/61 An additional one-million men have committed suicide and many of these instances likely concern persecution too or false allegations but reasons are undocumented

    34/61 Almost none of these men suffer any chronic mental illness but were denied any benefits of living in society and suicide was their best if not only choice

    35/61 Incidence of suicide among women is approximately one-quarter that among men and almost no instances have been in response to divorce, child support, family law or persecution by the government but instead are expressions of solipsism, narcissism and to manipulate with the public spectacle of their chronic victimhood which is why the proportion of women who fake suicide is so much greater than number of men

    36/61 In fact, imposition by family courts, agencies of child support and governments upon women in any way throughout history of the US has never even come close to present imposition upon men, including unlawful imprisonment, unlawful suspension of passports and driver licenses, systematic abduction and trafficking of children and denial of public assistance

    37/61 Whenever and where ever you find women whining that they are oppressed, men are oppressed far worse

    38/61 Keep your stick up-slope and up-stream

    39/61 Because of child support, Title IX and other developments denying them due process rights, men have no incentive to pursue educations, are actively precluded from educations and the ratio of men to women at universities presently approximates 2:3 (see the 2012 letter from Senator John McCain to US Attorney General Eric Holder concerning Title IX)

    40/61 Even though women represent a large majority of students matriculated at universities, they represent a small minority of real degrees like ones in the Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Engineering and Arts but are grossly over-represented by bullshit degrees like social-work and clinical psychology, business administration and middle-management, accounting and business finance, teaching in public schools (where young boys are drugged and indoctrinated into the feminist hate cult), and (of course) women’s studies

    41/61 These professions which women and feminists choose in disproportion to men allow them to exercise unmitigated and absolute control over the lives of others (particularly men and children) and chances are if your only contribution to solving a problem is telling others what to do then you’re the problem

    42/61 Approximately ten-percent of children in public schools are prescribed drugs like methylphenidate for treatment of ADHD even though they suffer no mental illness but are just bullied by their mothers and the government and have been denied systematically protection by their fathers (many sources corroborate these facts including ones available through the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Mental Health and many other official and authoritative sources)

    43/61 More than two-thirds of children in public schools prescribed drugs like methylphenidate are boys and governments and the pharmaceutical industry pay mothers and teachers (almost all women) for referring these children to therapists who prescribe the drugs because they have been taught that being a boy is a mental illness

    44/61 Also because they don’t live as long and owe child support they can’t possibly pay, men do not benefit from programs concerning public assistance to which they contributed disproportionately more than women and feminists

    45/61 Approximately ninety-five-percent of homeless are men and more than fifty-percent of those in poverty are men

    46/61 Adjusted for hazard, hours worked, career tenure, education, child support and alimony, taxes, contributions, accomplishments, productivity, public assistance, debt (and its monetization), and many other variables, men are paid considerably less than women and have been for decades

    47/61 Women are paid more and consume approximately eighty-five-percent (85%) of resources as concluded by many marketing and government studies (ie Bureau of Labor Statistics) and men are sent to die in endless wars, are forced to work long after they should have retired and can work, and are denied public assistance to satisfy that excessive consumption

    48/61 The government wants women fighting in combat because it knows they can be more easily manipulated than men to kill their own citizens and even men in their own ranks (just look at how good the government has been at destroying families and fathers and children by paying mothers, other women and feminists to do it)

    49/61 Men don’t live as long, are imprisoned at alarming incidence, are denied education and any benefits of it, are denied their right to due process and die prematurely so women and feminists comprise a growing majority of the population and electorate and vote themselves more entitlements with no responsibility and at the further expense of men and children

    50/61 Men represent a shrinking minority of the population and electorate because of systematic persecution, impoverishment, enslavement, imprisonment and extermination by women, feminists and their own government which is a dynamic recognized Thomas Payne 230 yrs ago, inspiring him to write: “The purpose of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.”

    51/61 The feminist police state metastasizes, our political, legal, social and financial infrastructure falls apart and the economy collapses but to create the illusion of recovery, the feminist police state promotes and executes the involuntary sacrifice of more men and the transfer of their wealth to women and feminists in exchange for votes and more control to satisfy its malignant narcissism and addiction to power

    52/61 As further evidence of its malignant narcissism, the feminist police state denies a growing number of men passports with which to escape their persecutors so that it can enslave them

    53/61 Slaves don’t make good employees because they don’t produce much and are hard to manage but women, feminists and governments aren’t adequate substitutes for men as laborers, scholars and fathers

    54/61 Legal reform will not discourage the systematic abuse of men because these problems were created by laws in the first place for benefit of the legal community, feminists, governments and women including legislators so more laws will only benefit the legal community, feminists, governments and women but not men

    55/61 Recognizing the limited value of law as a solution for criminal behavior approximately 2,500 years ago, Plato wrote: “Responsible people don’t need laws to be responsible and irresponsible people will always find ways to violate laws.”

    56/61 “And the hearts of the children shall be turned to their fathers and the hearts of fathers to their children lest I smite the world with a curse.” God (The Holy Bible, Malachi 4:6)

    57/61 These dynamics which have been itemized reflect a primitive and uncivilized form of social organizing typical of humans during the Stone-Age and lower primates

    58/61 The means never justify the ends and these dynamics represent the means, motives and mechanisms of death panels which scholars warn about

    59/61 Revolution is not violence but an affirmative defense against the violence that was done to us first and without provocation

    60/61 There shall be no rights without responsibility and the Nineteenth Amendment must be repealed

    61/61 These facts and conclusions are supported by and may be cross-referenced and verified by analyzing objectively data from the US Dept of the Census, US Dept of Public Health and Human Services, Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, the Heritage Foundation, US Dept of Justice, Depts of Corrections, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Nat’l Institute of Mental Health, Nat’l Institute for Suicide Prevention, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost all private and public marketing studies, myriad objective manuscripts published in refereed scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and journals by the American Medical Association, Taken Into Custody: America’s War on Fathers, Children and the Family by Dr Stephen Baskerville, The Law and Economics of Child Support Payments by William Comanor, and many other official, authoritative and respected sources

  6. And yet the solution whereby to literally starve the beast is actually quite simple, isn’t it?

    In fact it is so simple, people look right past it just like their own nose on their face.

    Oh well, maybe someday they will really want to wake up and get busy while there is still time left to save their skins.

    BTW, R.I.P. Richard Russell

    Richard Russell died Nov. 21 at his home in La Jolla, California. He was 91

    http://dowtheoryletters.com/Content_Free/richard-russell-passes-at-91.aspx

  7. Yeah, cut government pay to $9 an hour any bennies. I’m sure the corporate overlords and banksters will give all the money saved to the proles…..not!!!

  8. Maybe the solution is to make government jobs more interesting. The phrase “I wouldn’t do that for a million bucks” was originally spoken by a guy who read the job description for a government job back when a million was real money. People willing to grow cobwebs between their ears every weekday except holidays don’t come cheap, but they do come if they can retire early enough. If the jobs were more interesting, however, more people would want them and so the salaries would be less because of supply and demand.

    1. There’s no shortage of applicants for most public service positions. From everything I’ve seen, they receive mountains of applications for each position they advertise around here. To the extent that they basically end up throwing them all out and hiring someone’s cousin/friend because they can’t agree on a process to reasonably consider applicants through the normally prescribed process.
      Public sector salaries, if determined on a ‘market’ basis, would drop like a rock. But the politicians are afraid of the unions (and quasi-unions) and won’t get tough on them in negotiation. Also, the poor quality of public service management and “pay equity” mandates drive up costs significantly as well. In one government organization I’m familiar with, secretaries with 30 years of ‘experience’ are even paid more than Professional Engineers.

  9. This article is completely correct and this has been predicted for years now. Just read the fictional book “Atlas Shrugged” and you will see how this all ends. Problem is in order to fix the problem we all will have to suffer mightily. When it all collapses the ones left working will be blamed by the government as the problem. Reagan had it right all along. Most people believe government has the solutions to all our problems. Where I believe government IS the problem.

  10. One thing that has shocked me over the years, growing up in the 1990s, is that most of my friends in College wanted to immediately join the private sector upon graduation and thought that the public sector was just for losers. Fast forward a decade, and most of my friends of the time, if they could find jobs (many couldn’t), are now public servants.
    Whatever happened to the days of the government being an “employer of last resort”?
    As for myself, I graduated in the top quartile, and was actually rejected by the government HR apparatus for being too ambitious and ‘too good’ to work for them. Whatever that is supposed to mean. And the jobs simply haven’t existed in the private sector, especially in engineering.

    1. Engineering???? We re dying to try and hire Controls Engineer! there simply are not enough. whatengineering are you talking about?????

      1. How hard are you trying? Because I know plenty of people with controls engineering backgrounds (computer/electrical engineering) who can’t find jobs. If “PLCIndiana” says anything about where you’re trying to hire, is your salary competitive?

        1. Northwest Indiana near Chicago
          Pay starts at 120k a year and goes from there.
          e could hire 4 more people today if they existed and we have been trying very hard to find more people. Multiple recruiting firms have been unable to fill the openings also.

          1. Okay well do you have a website that I could refer people to? A phone number for a real live person to talk to? Email address?

          2. Thank you. I will take a look, and hopefully someone will be in contact with you in the next few days.

  11. So true. The media often propagandizes how high the salaries are in the SFBay tech sector. What they don’t tell you is that the average San Jose police officer earns more than the average Software Engineer, gets a full government guaranteed pension, has employer-paid training, and has iron-clad job security compared to the tech firms who think nothing of dumping their underperformers on a whim or during economic downturns.

    1. But then, there’s the getting shot at. And the not-climate-controlled environment. And the shift-work hours. I’m a software engineer, and have no issue at all with law enforcement having similar or better pay and bennies than I do.

      1. Well I’m not going to question your personal preferences, but it says a lot about the value of software engineers if they aren’t even paid as well as police officers.

      2. The average policemen never comes close to firing his weapon in deadly encounters – at odds with what the movies would have you believe.

        Have a look at the examples below.

        https://www.quora.com/On-average-how-many-times-does-an-officer-who-carries-a-firearm-on-the-job-fires-them-during-active-duty-in-the-course-of-his-or-her-officer-career

        The most deadly job in the US is being a garbage man.
        http://qz.com/410585/garbage-collectors-are-more-likely-to-die-on-the-job-than-police-patrol-officers/

  12. Yes, the parasites are absurdly overpaid, but the key word in there is parasites … not overpaid.

    They not only produce nothing of value, they are actively undermining the foundations of the economy and society. I’d be willing to take the hit and pay them what they’re getting, but they’d have to agree to stay home. At least when the mafia shakes you down, they just take the money and leave you alone.

    The only saving grace is that they work strictly 9-5. Witness the response to Katrina in Mississippi and the collapse of the levees in New Orleans. Strictly a 9-5 operation.

    You are completely correct in your analysis, as always. Thanks for what you do.

    In this Thanksgiving week, I’m grateful for you.

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