printThe excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Life In The Oink Sector”:
“Government workers may not always be genial to the public that pays them, but they are generous to a fault with their own. In the course of providing the stellar service for which the United States Postal Service has become famous, they pay themselves sizable salaries and bountiful benefits, and retire years before the stiffs who support them can afford to.”…
A sample of life in the Oink Sector (I offer many more):
“When wages and benefits are combined, federal civilian workers averaged $119,982 in 2008, twice the average compensation of $59,909 for private sector workers. This places the value of benefits for federal civilian workers at an average of $40,000 a year, four times the value of benefits that the average private sector employee receives.”…
“The average worker in the US pays $10,000 in income taxes; enough to keep one federal worker in style for one month! There are upward of 20 million of these pampered pigs, hogging 87,000 different institutions in government and public education, where the payrolls are always lard-laden in comparison to private-economy paysheets.”
“The number of government workers is increasing and is projected to continue on this trajectory.”…
“Over and above these mind-numbing numbers, it’s crucial to comprehend the underlying principles that permit in one sphere (the public sector) what they prohibit in the other (the private sector).”…
Read the complete column, “Life In The Oink Sector.” You can catch it too on Taki’s Magazine every week-end.
Update (Sept. 25): To clarify: there are very many good people who work for the state. In many cases this is becasue the government has expanded into so many sectors and industries that these professionals have few other options. Moreover, there are dedicated civil servants who take their jobs very seriously. Granted, due to rampant affirmative action and becasue of the fact that rigorous tests for civil servants are no longer administered (as these are said to disadvantage minorities), quality is increasingly rare. Put it this way: It’s been a long times since I’ve encountered a government worker who helped, rather than hindered, me. Or even did his job well. Are there some gifted teachers in the public school system? Yes, but it is well known that anyone dedicated to a core curriculum and proficiency over and above self-esteem will not survive. It is also well-known that teachers are some of the least intelligent college graduates.
Back to the point. Good people who work for the government for lack of viable options are victims, not perps.
Ilana,
I like the parasite analogy you finish up with; I use it often myself, observing that the usurpers have the morality of a tapeworm.
Still, the analogy doesn’t strictly apply, because a successful parasite must evolve to allow the host to live, or risk extinction. The parasite itself is infected with a variety of thought-viruses, probably the most important of which is the delusional belief in the socialist economic theories of Karl Marx. This facet of the parasitic belief system pretty well guarantees that despite any evidence to the contrary, our seed corn will be eaten and our farmhouses will be burned for heat. The resulting poverty will be used as justification for more and more Tax Pigs to rule over ever-smaller details of everyone’s existence. The cycle will continue until one or the other of us is dead.
The only glimmer of hope I see is that all the ‘dancing in the end zone’ that we had to endure after the last election and the rapid pace of implementation of parasitic policies that followed may have prodded the comatose giant out of his slumber.
Ayn Rand, as always, was right: Only a moral defense of capitalism can save liberty. Without it, a false savior is likely to arise, only to lead the herd to violent destruction.
Just last night I heard Hannity claim confidently that ‘World War II got us out of the Great Depression’. We cannot win with Marxist premises.
OINK! Your point on productivity, efficiency, and accountability is right on the mark. Imagine 2 private competing “meat inspection” firms: Rabbi Isaacson’s Kosher Inc. and Caliph Arafat’s Halal Inc. Suppose Rabbi Isaacson buys/invents some spectrometer which enables the same crew to inspect 4 times as many facilities for 1/2 the cost. He makes more profit, his employees inspect more facilities, and Caliph Arafat’s company loses business. Now imagine an innovator at USDA trying to lay off 50% of meat inspectors from efficiency – cannot be conceived. I have gotten in more TROUBLE suggesting efficiencies or proving that some projects are inherently worthless (I get ignored anyway) than I ever have by SPENDING money. That’s how “the system” works – parasites expanding like a cancer.
In the first week that I left the pig-like “private” Defense sector and returned to the Government, I needed to send some time-urgent SECRET documents but sending it overnight classified mail required a 6 person approval process to “stop waste”. The bad news was the taxpayers instead wasted $ 5000 but the great news was that they SAVED the $12! Only parasitical companies like General Motors would be so stupid – OINK!
Memo To Erudites:
My friends in Glasgow have a saying for excellence like this Ilana: “Pure, dead, brilliant man!” What a meticulous and devastating piece you’ve written here. And another friend of mine said once upon a time, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Now, isn’t the opposite of truth… deception? And isn’t the opposite of being set free… enslaved? Hmmm… sooner rather than later, Maddow and the rest of her willfully ignorant throng will be milling around wringing their hands and asking, “How in the world could this have happened?!”
Fast spreads the Oinkosphere Expanse
The “Big Bang” of Obama
Galactic levels of deceit and debt
And porcine, ego drama!
Barack bereft of sense and shame
And others of their ilk
Are fashioning an old sow’s ear
From our nation’s purse of silk!
You should try life on the inside of the government system. Many of us choose public service, and make 50% LESS than we would in the private sector. However, it’s a two-tiered system, especially the public universities, where we are forced to play with those gaming the system. We are forced to lick the boots of those making three times what we make.
“You should try life on the inside of the government system. Many of us choose public service, and make 50% LESS than we would in the private sector.” Soren
My brother, who worked for the government before it nearly drove him insane, said 20% of the workers carry the other 80%.
We all have to eat so if the currently crippled private sector has no openings then you must do what you must.
Speaking of “service”:
And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ Luke 22:25
Soren and John Danforth’s comments lead to some speculation – how many Americans are really IN the private sector these days? My nephew with his small bookstore is. But lawyers, most “educators”, public hospitals, defense contractors, auto dealers … are all de facto extensions of the government tapeworm. How do you count a physician with 80% of his patients on Medicaid? Or an employee at Citigroup? The tentacles of the beast have long extensions.
My husband has been employed as a federal agent & pilot with DHS for almost a decade. I can tell you, yes, he does bring home a comfortable salary that allows (as long as we clip coupons, purchase items in bulk & on sale, and limit superfluous spending) me to work in the home—home schooling our 10-year-old and corralling our 2-year-old. I can also inform you that he spends a minimum of 90-120 days a year away from his family protecting the citizens of this great country. This does not include the hours spent “on call” frequent weekends each year. Is there waste in the government agencies? Most assuredly there is. Are there those who work for every dime they earn? You better know it.
My own father worked as a civilian on a defense project after retiring from his civilian job. He hired in doing menial engineering work, headed the department after a few years, and stayed well into his 70’s. How he endured, I still wonder. He still talks about how few people were competent, and how they carried the program while most others spent all day trying to figure out the crossword puzzle and emailing each other. When they put a particularly odious imbecile in charge of the project, he retired.
Whatever gets done, gets done despite the best efforts of management.
My last seven years of working before retirement were in civil service, working for the US Navy in Philadelphia at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division. In seven years time, I would estimate I had about 1-1/2 years worth of work to do. The rest of the time, there was no project to work on, no funding, no direction, simply nothing to do. All efforts to propose work were rebuffed because they did not fit in with “the plan” that the bosses supposedly had, the plan that just never seemed to produce any work for us.
I worked on all manner of personal projects, wrote papers, learned new things, studied new software, anything to try to keep busy for months on end. It is incredibly demoralizing to have nothing at all to do, day in and day out, even if you are well paid to do it. Every year the lab would ask for more money than the year before, even though nothing had been done. It was just a dead, flat waste!
I would have left, but at the age when you are approaching retirement, it is not easy to find another job. I finally reconciled myself to simply riding it out until I could retire, and then I left.