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Mom, When I Grow Up I Really Want to be a Bureaucrat
BigGovernment.com ^ | 6/26/2010 | Veronique De Rugy

Posted on 06/27/2010 9:08:06 AM PDT by GVnana

Mom, When I Grow Up I Really Want to be a Bureaucrat

That’s because when the entire country is hurting and the private sector continues to lose jobs, bureaucrats are being hired.

The following chart makes that case. Since the beginning of the recession (roughly January 2008), some 7.9 million jobs were lost in the private sector while 590,000 jobs were gained in the public one. And since the passage of the stimulus bill (February 2009), over 2.6 million private jobs were lost, but the government workforce grew by 400,000.

Plus, as you know, according to the latest numbers from Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average federal civilian worker now earns double what private-sector workers earn when factoring in wages and benefits ($119,982 vs. $59,909). And the gap is increasing. According to Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, in 2000, the average federal worker earned 66 percent more in total compensation than the average private-sector worker. By 2008, that ratio had risen to 100 percent.

That’s serious money.

(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: economy
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And you're just stupid for holding down a private sector job and paying taxes.
1 posted on 06/27/2010 9:08:10 AM PDT by GVnana
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To: GVnana

Does California still have a private sector?


2 posted on 06/27/2010 9:11:27 AM PDT by GeronL (Just say NO to conservativecave.com, it rots your teeth!)
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To: GVnana
bureaucrat song
3 posted on 06/27/2010 9:21:15 AM PDT by Vroomfondel
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To: GVnana

Does anyone know how many productive, tax paying, private sector jobs are required to support just one non-productive, bureaucratic government job?


4 posted on 06/27/2010 9:21:59 AM PDT by deener
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To: GeronL

Speaking as a California sole proprietor, it’s like living off road kill out here...


5 posted on 06/27/2010 9:22:45 AM PDT by GVnana
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To: GVnana
Plus, as you know, according to the latest numbers from Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average federal civilian worker now earns double what private-sector workers earn when factoring in wages and benefits ($119,982 vs. $59,909).

I've read that before, and I'm saying it is BS. I am not for runaway hiring of federal civilians, but there is no way that the AVERAGE salary is $119,982.

This is the GS pay scale.

For this snippet of "$119,982" IN AVERAGE SALARY that the group is throwing around, there would have a huge majority of people making more than GS-15s in the highest step rank.

The average GS rank is a GS-10 overall, including every federal agency and employees. Their salary (step 1, no locality pay adjustment) is $45,771.

If they didn't mean "salary" when they said salary, but want to throw out some "well, that includes benefits too!" argument, then I can inflate anyone's total compensation package and sell it as they are 'really' making $250,000 per year.

The folks that made that stat up would be much more effective if they didn't "pad" their data.

Or, they could just tell us that 39.8% of all statistics are made up. It would be just as effective.


6 posted on 06/27/2010 9:27:21 AM PDT by SkyPilot
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To: GVnana
And since the passage of the stimulus bill (February 2009), over 2.6 million private jobs were lost, but the government workforce grew by 400,000.

Keynesians obstinately refuse to challenge the government intervention that is responsible or mass unemployment, and an insistence that the problem of unemployment be dealt with by means of still more government intervention.

7 posted on 06/27/2010 9:30:24 AM PDT by mjp (pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, independence, limited government, capitalism})
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To: GVnana

Now there’s an image


8 posted on 06/27/2010 9:44:53 AM PDT by GeronL (Just say NO to conservativecave.com, it rots your teeth!)
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To: Vroomfondel

One of my favorite songs.. I think of it often!


9 posted on 06/27/2010 9:45:57 AM PDT by divine_moment_of_facts (Give me Liberty.. or I'll get up and get it for myself!)
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To: GVnana

LOL, I said something like this long ago, though in different words.


10 posted on 06/27/2010 9:57:15 AM PDT by darkangel82 (I don't have a superiority complex, I'm just better than you.)
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To: SkyPilot

Salary + benefits, but then that would mean reading the fricking article.

Parasites all of them.


11 posted on 06/27/2010 10:19:18 AM PDT by BenKenobi (I want to hear more about Sam! Samwise the stouthearted!)
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To: GVnana

Mark Steyn wrote an especially good column recently about how the highest ambition for the young and the talented in socialist paradises such as Europe and Canada is to nail down a cushy gummint job, even if it’s in sanitation or ticket-taking.

And to think that just a few years back the young all wanted to start their own internet-based business and were talking about making one’s first million before age thirty...


12 posted on 06/27/2010 10:20:34 AM PDT by sinanju
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To: GVnana
In the late 1970s, during the Carter years, I was just a little kid. One of my Mother's friends asked me: "What do you want to be when you grow up?". I would tell them, "I want to be an actor" (I was in love with the movies, tv shows, and the theater). But the reaction I got from my mothers friend was: "No, you shouldnt do that. What you should do is get a civil service job and in twenty years you get a pension!"

Months later, I was asked the same question by another one of my Mother's friends, and my answer was the same: I want to be an actor. And yet this persons reaction was the same as the first: get a civil service job and in twenty years, I get a pension.

And then it happened a third time, my mothers friend would ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I told them an actor, and the friend tried to steer me towards thinking about a civil service job with a pension.

After the third time of getting this same reaction, I was stunned. Why was I getting that same advice over and over again? I didnt realize it, but apparently the economy was so bad at the time, that the adults saw government jobs as the only thing with a future, steadiness, and real job security.

After the third time getting that same "get a civil service job" responses from my Mother's adult friends, I got tired of it and stopped telling them what I wanted to do. Instead, after being asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would shrug my shoulders and say "I dont know". I just didnt want them to put down my dream again. If they werent going to be supportive of my desire to be an actor, I didnt want to hear it.

Eventually I didnt become an actor, but I didnt become a government bureaucrat either.

13 posted on 06/27/2010 10:23:39 AM PDT by lowbridge (Rep. Dingell: "Its taken a long time.....to control the people.")
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To: GVnana

Bureaucrats are yes-men hacks who go along to get the big wage and perks they feel entitled to due to their elitist status. In other words, their useless. The only thing they’ve created is the crease that runs down their suit pants. And they don’t even do that. Unions protect them and they can prance around like the intelligentsia. Obama provides the perfect cover where the bureaucrats and the oppressed social welfare “poor” will out vote the real producers. It will be a land of parasites.


14 posted on 06/27/2010 10:29:29 AM PDT by Blind Eye Jones
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To: lowbridge

If you add salary, benefits,(including regional colas), plus retirement contributions(actual or needed)..it is way over 100k for govt jobs.
We have two sons in the application process and the reason they are applying..no jobs even at half the pay as govt.


15 posted on 06/27/2010 10:30:33 AM PDT by Oldexpat
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To: lowbridge
Eventually I didnt become an actor,

You did play Al Bundy in Nigeria.

16 posted on 06/27/2010 10:31:30 AM PDT by Tijeras_Slim (Live jubtabulously!)
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To: Oldexpat
We have two sons in the application process and the reason they are applying..no jobs even at half the pay as govt.

That would make them part of the problem

17 posted on 06/27/2010 10:40:50 AM PDT by paul51 (11 September 2001 - Never forget)
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To: deener

doesn’t matter. We can just keep raising the taxes on productive people....or print more money to save their jobs


18 posted on 06/27/2010 10:42:42 AM PDT by paul51 (11 September 2001 - Never forget)
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To: GVnana

I suspect that there are many Federal workers, even at ICE and the DHS, that are sympathetic to THE CAUSE, but they dare not speak or they will be $hit canned swiftly. The one has eyes and ears everywhere.

That government job paycheck never fails to show up. And they Gotta get in that 20 years. A government retirement is a ticket to PARADISE.

The little Fed workers keep their head down and eyes averted and cower in tiny little cubicles like scared bunnies.


19 posted on 06/27/2010 10:43:20 AM PDT by NeverForgetBataan (Sure, you can forgive your enemies.......... But get even first)
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To: Blind Eye Jones

They’re worse than useless; they’re harmful parasites.


20 posted on 06/27/2010 10:51:41 AM PDT by MonicaG (God bless our military! Praying and thanking God for you every day. Thank you!)
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