Posted on 09/03/2018 2:02:22 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After President Trump announced he wants to revoke federal workers' automatic 2.1% pay raise this year, the response was predictable. Democrats and government unions squealed. The only really surprising thing is that Trump didn't do it sooner.
"In light of our nation's fiscal situation, Federal employee pay must be performance-based, and aligned strategically toward recruiting, retaining and rewarding high-performing Federal employees and those with critical skill sets," Trump wrote in a letter to Congress.
The move brought a near-instantaneous response. "Cutting federal pay is not the way to run the best government possible or to recruit and retain the most talented Americans to serve their fellow countrymen," No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer said.
California Democrat Eric Swalwell was more succinct, tweeting out that Trump had "screwed" federal workers.
Despite the wailing on the left, Trump's move shouldn't be controversial. What he described is exactly how private employees get compensated. Why should government employees be any different?
The truth is, by any reasonable measure a federal employee makes way more than a private worker for doing the same job. But federal workers don't have to answer to a marketplace. Once hired, it's almost impossible to fire them. And it's equally difficult to tell whether a federal worker is productive. How do you measure a bureaucrat's output?
By the way, Trump's move doesn't include the military. They got a 2.4% pay hike last year, and will get 2.6% this year. It's the 2.1 million federal workers, who got a 1.4% pay hike last year, that will get nothing. Unless, that is, Congress rejects his move.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Whatta bout equal lack of pay for equal lack of working?
Yup, 2/3 of the Federal government should be eliminated entirely.
Hmmm sounds like you are on the road to defining liberalism.
Kind of like the bottle washed up on the beach and a genie came out of it and granted a wish.
The guy says I would love to go to Hawaii but I am afraid of planes and don’t like boats.
Build me a bridge to Honolulu.
The genie went on to explain that the logistics made it a complete impossibility and no way an undertaking like that could succeed.
Well, explain how women ‘think’.
‘Would you want a bicycle lane with that bridge or are 4 lanes enough’?
I think the females in government, the media and entertainment industries would raise hell about having their pay cut.
“And it’s equally difficult to tell whether a federal worker is productive. How do you measure a bureaucrat’s output?”
How “productive” do you want your bureaucrats to be?
“So federal workers make 80% more than private ones, an absurd and unsustainable gap.”
And the bigger issue is there are about three times as many of them as there needs to be. 80% higher compensation for 67% less work.
Yup. Just posting public proof of what hypocrites liberals are. All depends on whose ox is getting gored, for them, or they’d apply the same “logic” consistently.
How can you prove equal work? on a production line, where you can count the products made? Everywhere else, the protected class members will demand equal pay for less work.
Cut the pay and cut the people. Government adds nothing to GNP. It is a parasite that eats off the private sector.
Equal pay for equal work is so invalidated in so many ways. Easiest to see if locality pay. Its the way politicians keep federal employees outside of major cities poor like D.C. poor. Crushing poor states economies and not paying fair retirement benefits.
Best way to fix equal pay for equal work is, make all politicians wages the average wages of the area they represent.
SeekAndFind wrote: “Before you bring out a violin, please note: Bureau of Economic Analysis data show that in 2016, federal government workers had average total compensation — wages, benefits, vacation, etc. — of $127,259 a year. For the private sector, it’s just $70,764. So federal workers make 80% more than private ones, an absurd and unsustainable gap. As recently as 1990, the difference was just 30%.”
Completely irrelevant. The skills and experience are remarkably different in the private sector. For example, those average private sector workers include workers at McDonalds and Walmart. The federal government includes very few fry cooks or grocery checkers. Now compare mid-career engineers in both fields.
And for a lot of municipal and state workers things are even more out of wack. We’ll have to have some sort of bankruptcy out for them or something—because the private sector will never be able to support the insane pensions the local pols have given to the local muni unions.
“I would love to see the government means test disability recipients.”
Why? If a person works and pays Social Security taxes, and becomes disabled, why is he not entitled to the benefit for which he paid?
“Add in a rule that a person making over a certain amount is not eligible to receive SS,...”
Again, why? Same question.
Social Security benefits are already heavily skewed toward low wage workers.
Your idea amounts to an even more aggravated theft than the current system thus making it deeply immoral, but as well, really stupid.
I already paid my 15.6% to the federal mafia. I also saved for my retirement separately. That’s what folks are SUPPOSED to do.
As it is, someone who makes minimum wage all his life will get about 72% income replacement in retirement from Social Security at normal retirement age.
For someone at the top of the Social Security taxable income scale, the very maximum benefit is about 26% of income.
The government can get away with this level of theft because the individual can boost his earnings through his own private savings. If you penalize folks even more for doing the RIGHT THING, fewer will do it. So, these folks will have less on which to retire. And they will notice that poor people get relatively much more out of the system than they do. And they will demand equal treatment.
But, without raising taxes astronomically high, the federal mafia will be unable to pay higher wage workers 72% of their final income. The fix? Reduce the benefits of the poor.
I’ll propose a deal: Let’s deny high income earners their just Social Security benefits, and let them out of paying Social Security taxes.
Of course, the whole system will collapse quickly, but hey, what the heck?
The dirty little (not too) secret is that Social Security only survives because high income earners are willing to HEAVILY subsidize the checks of low income folks. Without the goose of high income earners, there would be no golden eggs at all for poor folks, and they’d have no Social Security checks at all.
Federal employees may not occupy the same spectrum as private sector employees in terms of skills and credentials. It’s an apples and oranges comparison that does not clarify anything.
What you say is all well and good if SS was an earned benefit, but it is not. It is a welfare program as the USSC has codified with certain rulings. We all are paying in but the few get to pay more, and get out less. I realize this, as I am one of those. Logic no longer matters though, the next popular push is going to be for minimum basic income. It will happen as sure as Pelosi will need another face lift. Conservatives have lost on this battle many many times The best way is to go with Chile’s plan, but somewhere in the middle is where we start. Compromise with a new era of SS, bump up the poors draw from it, put all workers into that Chilean plan, and give them a choice of a pittance, or real money growth that they own.
It is neither a personally-owned asset nor a welfare benefit. One does earn it through minimum participation of 40 quarters, but what is earned is at the discretion of the government.
The program is overgenerous to the poor as it is, and indulging that fatal flaw won’t make it any better.
What is overlooked is that if the replacement rate of pre-retirement income were held steady, instead of creeping up over the decades, over 90% of the structural deficit would be eliminated.
Then, with a few minor tweaks, that don’t include more brigandage, one could offer a small matching by the feds on private accounts for the bottom quintile of the wage earning populace, which could eventually lead to full privately-owned accounts.
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