polecat news and views: You better start thinking about the gov't class

Thursday, June 3, 2010

You better start thinking about the gov't class

Two Americas by John Hinderacker/Powerline

There are, indeed, two Americas: the increasingly straitened world of the private sector, where jobs are competitive, money is scarce, and job security is, for many, nonexistent; and the lush world of the government employee, where competition is more or less unknown, salaries and benefits often double those available to private workers, retirement is ten or more years earlier than in the private sector, and it may take a felony to get fired. This is the central economic conflict of our time, between lavishly compensated and ever more gluttonous government employees, and wealth-creating private citizens who are increasingly unable to support their public-sector masters in the style to which they have become accustomed.

So this video by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, titled "There are too many bureaucrats and they are paid too much," couldn't be more timely. Here is just one remarkable set of numbers, showing that federal employees now earn double the compensation of those in the private sector;