Remember, public employees don’t pay taxes anyway. They are a net drain on GDP, they don’t ADD to it.
Repeat after me: public employees don’t pay taxes. It’s illusory.
Say this as many times as you need to until is sinks in. NO public employee pays ANYthing for taxes, retirement, unemployment insurance, medical benefits, ANY of it.
This is a fundament of economics as simple as “you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax.” and almost no one gets it and certainly no one is talking about it. Not out in the open. It’s contrary to how our consensus public education victimhood would have us think about wealth creation, redistribution, generational theft.
How can someone who is PAID by taxing the wage-earners, the ones who CREATE value in the economy, pay taxes? It may say they do on their pay stub, sure, and they are asked to “put in a little more” for benefits, but in reality, every time a public employee from President down to the least-paid garbage collector (cough-cough… don’t they make something like $200,000 a year in New York City?) gets a raise, it is paid for by someone who MAKES that money, someone who has been TAXED, that money taken from them. The money public employees are paid is redistributed from wage-earners, economic value-creators.
And no, I’m not saying teachers have no “value,” their labor when not promoting globalist lies like global warming is inestimable, but again, they are paid WITH tax money.
Think of it this way: a public employee saying they too pay taxes is like a man soaking in a bathtub scooping up and pouring out water with a cup saying “see, I’m filling the tub.”
America’s government was bankrupt 23 Trillion dollars ago, sold out to the highest bidder; how do you think Nancy Pelosi, Feinstein, Waters, Franks, and all those thousands of “representatives” got rich in public service?
Time someone - Trump - was the adult in the room and booted the non-essential employees out of the tub.
Think it over. Change the conversation. Pass it along. Open someone else’s eyes.
The discussion should be, are we truly getting value for our money spent and how do we take control of government “by, of and for the people” back from politicians corrupted by taxpayers dollars laundered through teachers/public employee unions, planned parenthood, Solyndra, GE, and all the rest?
While we’re at it, how do we delegitimize the naming of roads, public buildings, parks, stadiums after “public officials” who have made a lifetime’s wealth out of bilking the true wage-earners out of the fruits of their labor and, like Mooch hell Obeyme, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, done their level best to make them feel guilty for wanting to keep more of it while they live large at wage earners’ children’s children’s children’s expense.
I have been telling people that for many, many years. After slowly explaining it to them most realize the truth. Many of the public employees then get mad at me while others just say: "You know, you're right."
>> public employees don’t pay taxes.
And what about the defense contractors that are completely funded by the taxpayer?
As a lifelong self-employed, conservative capitalist, I don’t agree with you. Yes, govt employees do provide services that are ultimately funded by tax revenue — services that we may or may not support. Yet, those same employees file their 1040s like the rest of us. So arguably, they’re a conduit for compounded taxation. They should be paid less by the amount they’re normally taxed. And likewise, the govt budget should be lowered by the sum total — thereafter, we wouldn’t be paying taxes to fund the secondary taxation the govt is applying to its own labor force.
I totally appreciate your point about excessive pay. A Fed/State/Local job shouldn’t be a preferred job.
Public employees pay taxes. Yes, they are also paid out of taxes, but they are paid for work - which they give. Or should.
I spent 25 years in the military. I deployed far more times than I could count. I trained. I buried coworkers who died while training. And I was paid. For my service.
You cannot say public employees are a drain on the GDP without accounting for the work done in exchange for their salaries.
I strongly support reforms to make it vastly easier to FIRE public employees who do NOT work. I encountered my share of GS-13s during my military career who seemed to pride themselves on how little they did since they knew they could not be fired. THAT is evil and I’d love to see firing a public employee become simple.
But many public employees DO work. Not just the military. That some do not is evil, but do not pretend that no public employee works! My first job was manual labor for the US Forest Service and I worked by tail off! Minimum wage and I would collapse from exhaustion when I crawled home. That was 40+ years ago and I’m sure the USFS has changed. But there is still work being done.