The private sector has been hit particularly hard during this recession… and things don’t look like they will be getting much better any time soon. As the pool of unemployed grows… and the more desperate they become… the more salaries for new workers will also decline. Obama keeps talking about “shared responsibility” and the “sacrifices” we need to be willing to make for the next generation… and he may be right; perhaps we do need to make sacrafices to ensure the next generation is better off than we are. But amidst all these calls for those of us in the private sector to “sacrafice”… one segment of our society that isn’t doing much in the way of sacrifice are those with government connections… the “ruling class” as Angela Codivella so aptly put it. Here is the latest from USA Today:
At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds…
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.
Twice the average compensation. Shocking, isn’t it? And what makes matters worse is that the public sector… which has been hurting like never before… is subsidizing the extravagance of public sector employees. It is one thing if someone EARNS more in the private sector because he or she creates greater value or sells a product someone else wants to buy… thereby gaining wealth by the voluntary exchange of goods and services. It is quite another thing when an employee of the state — who produces nothing more of value than their private sector counterparts — earn far more simply by virtue of their connections to political power and influence.
Perhaps it is best said another way: Government profits far more of the backs of the private sector than the private sector profits by means of the free market. The very liberals who lament “greedy” and “evil” corporations don’t even bat an eye when the political class profits by a 2-to-1 factor off the working class. If your worldview revolves around the idea that government is intrinsically good… than I suppose one wouldn’t find this to be some great injustice… but for the rest of us… those of us who see the waste, the inefficiencies, and the incompetence systematic of government activity… than this is truly an outrage.
via Federal workers earning double their private counterparts – USATODAY.com.