Posted on 08/30/2010 6:15:33 AM PDT by Poundstone
As a retired federal government employee, I’m offended when I hear Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and a host of other conservative talk show hosts bash all levels of government employees. It seems the all-time favorite government employee to bash works for the Department of Motor Vehicles.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, federal government employees in 2008 earn an average of $67,691 compared to $60,046 in the private sector. This doesn’t count the benefits all federal government employees enjoy.
Not all federal government employees make as much as their private sector counterparts, but many do. For example, a registered nurse working for the Veterans Administration might make $74,460 compared to a nurse at a private hospital making $63,780. However, a federal government optometrist makes about $61,530 compared to an optometrist working in the private sectors who makes $106,665 salary.
What people like Limbaugh and Hannity probably don’t realize is that there are downsides to working for the federal government. Employees face severe restrictions and sanctions on many things everyone in the private sector take for granted. Congress alone determines federal employee salaries and benefits, not the marketplace. Employee organizations lobby Congress, but it’s unlawful for employees to strike if they don’t get what they want.
(Excerpt) Read more at northstarnational.com ...
What Magellan is saying about salaried employees is not common across the board in government (perhaps it is in DoD, I don’t know) but most government workers at GS-11 or greater must work the 40 hours, but also work hours in addition to that without compensation. Sometimes there is a special project or some other emergency for which overtime/compensatory time will be approved for these people, but on a day-to-day basis it is fairly rare in most agencies.
The people I have to deal with (the IRS) don't deserve to even make minimum wage. They are clueless & worthless!
I could get more accurate answers if I called the animal shelter and ask one of their animals.
You can call ten times and get ten different answers and they may all be wrong!
I don’t even work for the government...
>Now, about the lead off sentence ~ Limbaugh and Hannity ~ both these pukes make more money in a month than any federal employee at any level makes in a year.
While you may not care there is a huge difference between how those two make their money and how a government employee makes their money.
Rush and Hannity provide a service which is voluntarily consumed. If I don’t like it I don’t have to pay a dime. If they fail to provide value to consumers, they go broke.
A federal (state, or county for that matter) employee gets their salary ultimately at the point of a gun. They are not responsibly directly to those they serve. I get all manner of government ‘services’ that I pay for like it or not.
While there are some positions which are best served by government, we have far more these days which are not.
So do an awful lot of federal employees.
Most of my time (over the last 10 years of my career) was spent on the phone listening to you people out there telling me why you didn't owe the money (for large dollar value postage ~ the kind of money major publications and advertisers pay) ~ and most of it was lies.
There are definitely more mob connected people in this country than is generally believed or I wouldn't have heard so much of that cr*p on the phone.
Still, I've heard the best ~ and for all of 'em it wasn't their fault, and our rules were too complex, and our employees had their thumb on the scale, and whatever. You know the deal ~ your customers pull that stuff on you too. And then there were the death threats ~ which had to be taken seriously!
And for all that some of you pukes think I didn't provide ahead for my own retirement. Look, I made my deposits, and if they'd gone into nothing but T-bills, the returns will pay my retirement for the next 99 years ~ even at today's interest rates.
I'm sorry guys, you don't know beans about federal employment and most of your arguments are part of the same litany I heard so many times from people who owed millions of bucks for work done by the post office, and they didn't want to pay it.
Did you know how many pure s--+h--les there are in the United States that have a post office? You could end up anywhere, and traveling around to the big mailer's printing plants, they're definitely in two places ~ the worst part of a big city, or way out in the country where there aren't even farm houses.
We did find one neat place where there was big game hunting ~ but that's just one place.
>> Well, my pension is untouchable.
>> Now, if I were still a federal employee and knew that budget cuts would cut my salary? No, I wouldn’t be in favor of that. Who would?
So effectively, the private sector is bearing all the risk, and funding federally guaranteed salaries and retirement. This is a serious inequity.
Imagine if it were the responsibility of fed/state employees to fund the private sector via taxation of their paychecks. In this imaginary landscape, the private sector employees had virtually guaranteed incomes and retirement, while those in the public sector were expendable losing their jobs, homes, retirement savings, etc.
Some say it’s about employment choices, but when is taxation, fed/state debt, and minting cash a choice for the private citizen as it concerns funding the public sector?
>You’re just trying to excuse the fact they make their money sitting down talking.
Your reading comprehension skills are utterly miserable. I mean it is alarming that you would respond to something you evidently either didn’t bother to read or simply didn’t comprehend.
I honestly don’t give a rat’s behind about your whining about the travails of your job. It doesn’t matter one whit.
Is your job something which couldn’t be better done by the private sector? It doesn’t sound like it. As such, you live off of coercion. You are not subject to the rigors of having to satisfy a customer.
Rush and Hannity do. It doesn’t matter what they do for a living as long as they are not doing it as a product of coercion. They could be blowing smoke rings and smoking stogies for all I care as long as they don’t force someone to pay them to do it. Their money is gained legitimately- without coercion.
I'm surprised you don't recognize the situation ~ the customer, or vendor, buys or sells something from or to you ~ and then they forget to pay, or they charge too much.
Hmmm ~ what you mean NO CUSTOMER CONTACT. I got your customers right here!!!!!!!!!
>Look here, Rush and Hannity BOTH employ the services of professional bill collectors ~ they have people right there on their staff who know how to get payments made, and if that doesn’t work, those people know how to get the second level ~ outside ~ involved.
>I’m surprised you don’t recognize the situation ~ the customer, or vendor, buys or sells something from or to you ~ and then they forget to pay, or they charge too much.
>Hmmm ~ what you mean NO CUSTOMER CONTACT. I got your customers right here!!!!!!!!!
I definitely am convinced you have a comprehension problem.
I don’t know that I can make it any more clear. You do a job which the private sector could do better. There is no justification for your job to be a government one. Because of the nature of your job, there is an element of coercion in your revenue source.
I will not try and break this down any further because I would be getting down to monosyllables.
Obviously only experts in those rules can determine whether or not the amount at dispute is sustainable in a court of law.
Final Agency Decisions are made all the time in every agency based on the determination of that agency's experts.
Once you have that in hand you can go to court.
If you wanted I suppose the bill could be handed over to Sonny's Asian Art but Sonny doesn't have anyone who knows what the rules are ~ but he does have folks on hand who know how to bust open your doors and pry open your safe.
If that doesn't work, Sonny goes to court too!
>Sure, right ~ you have no idea whatsoever what I’m talking about. Postal regulations are complex ~ they take years to learn. The debts are due on account of a failure by the mailer to make a conscientious decision to adhere to those rules.
The day I care about postal regulation is the day, well it gets real cold in the nether regions.
If the postal business were so hard Fed Ex and UPS wouldn’t be kicking the crap out of the USPS without subsidies and a monopoly on first class main.
Hmmm.
BTW, their rules? They, too, are complex. They have pricing specialists who know them much better than their customers ~ just to keep folks honest eh!
But, we digress ~ FedEx and UPS are regulated by the states and numerous foreign governments. They have people on board who KNOW THEIR OPERATIONS, AIR OPERATIONS, PARCEL SORTING EQUIPMENT, FOREIGN REGULATIONS, etc. and they defend their companies against wrong billing the same way I defended USPS against wrong billing ~ and frequently against the same customers.
Although there are advisors, consigliere and other sorts of private operators who try to get the best deal they can for their customers, they all know the classification people who really know what's going on in every aspect of the business and they respect them ~ you really don't want to get on their wrong sides.
Now, if you were to develop a large internet based mail order business you would learn these things ~ probably the hard way.
Take my advice ~ don't think the hired guns in the mailing industry can beat the rules ~
Oh, yeah, one more thing, except for a miniscule sum of money paid to USPS for "free for the blind" all the income the agency gets is from payments made by mailers ~ even if the mailer is a government agency.
Worth noting that about 90% of USPS business is in non-monopoly categories.
>Worth noting that about 90% of USPS business is in non-monopoly categories.
I would love to see the definitions used to come up with this number.
Checks you write are "letters" and are covered under the monopoly. However, there's a statutory exception that allows them to be sent by means other than the mail for purposes of clearance.
Your typical adertising is not covered by the monopoly. Your bills are covered because they are letters.
BTW, UPS was founded by former managers and specialists from Post Office Department headquarters. FedEx was founded by Fred Smith ~ he had a pretty good idea in college. His roommate's father was the postmaster of Gary Indiana, and I know the PM of Gary had the idea first.
What were you going to tell me about UPS and Fed Ex?
“Stop bashing federal employees”
I think that the federal employees should stop worrying about being “bashed” and should start worrying about living on the pension haircut they’ll be getting in the not too distant future.
Sure they sound all meek and mild on this thread....I worked harder than....I don’t have it as well as.....
But....are you really sure that a federal worker, even a federal retiree won’t do just about anything to keep their benefits, since they did just about nothing to get them?
I had one threaten violence if he didn’t get his benefits (he knows who he is). I wonder if he wouldn’t do just about anything if the federal establishment told him he would lose his benefits if he didn’t do what they say - be it intimidation, campaign on conservative blogs, or certainly in the case of the one fellow, kill the very folks he’s milked for pay and benefits in order to keep his pampered way of life.
What do you think federal law enforcement would do if their pay and benefits were cut? Is there anything they wouldn’t do? That’s a better question.
Obama’s army is already here. It’s the New Army of Northern Virginia - federal retirees, federal employees....and they want their benefits no matter who has to pay, or how much they have to pay.
Please go to my link below for the top 200 federal contractors, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen would not exist without their federal contracts. Every single employer on and in the top 100 and would not exist without the Feds. Maybe only Allied Health isn't a contractor but somehow I think they are. That is why DC area has bloated salaries all the Fed contractors are in that metro area and they exist only through taxpayer funding. Go to-
http://washingtontechnology.com/toplists/top-100-lists/2009.aspx
>What were you going to tell me about UPS and Fed Ex?
There wasn’t something I was going to tell you. There was the fact that FedEx and UPS make money while the UPS doesn’t.
Amazing isn't it.
You’re sounding a little bizarre.
Federal pensions, unlike state pensions, are not dependent on tax revenue. If necessary, they can be paid by simply printing more money.
State pensions, on the other hand, require funding from state tax receipts. If there’s not enough money to pay them, the state has to raise more tax revenue. We all see how that’s playing in states like California and Illinois. Which is why I’d say state pensions in those states are in long-term trouble.
Unlike federal pensions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.