Over the past year, a lot of people have been talking about “the 1%” versus “the 99%.” But if you’re concerned about one class exploiting another for economic gain, that’s the wrong way to look at the problem. Posted on 05/24/2012 7:33:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
Over the past year, a lot of people have been talking about “the 1%” versus “the 99%.” But if you’re concerned about one class exploiting another for economic gain, that’s the wrong way to look at the problem.
See an EAGnews.org exclusive animation explaining the situation here.
The protesters are right about one thing: there are gross class inequities in America.
There is one class that works more hours per day, more days per year, for more years of their lives. They have less job security, they pay more for health coverage, and their retirements are not guaranteed. Their incomes are determined by their performance, limited by economic reality, and tied to the fortunes of their employers. This is the private-sector producer class.
Part of what private-sector workers produce is taken for the benefit of another class, the government class.
The government class plays by a different set of rules, dictated by unions and implemented by the politicians they help elect. For government union members, income is not determined by job performance, but by how many years they’ve managed to stick around. They’ll work fewer hours, get more vacation time, and make more money than their producer class colleagues.
They’ll get better health coverage, and it’ll cost them less. The government class will retire at an earlier age and with a pension providing a guaranteed income, something fewer than 1 in 10 producer-class workers enjoy.
In Wisconsin, the government class makes up 14% of the population, exploiting the other 86%, the producer class.
The average Wisconsin state employee makes about $70,000 annually in salary and benefits, while the private-sector workers whose taxes pay for it earn about $15,000-a-year less. Talk about income disparity!
The government class is powerful because government employees are members of unions that contribute heavily to political campaigns. And in Wisconsin, no single group funnels more money into politics than teachers unions.
As the producer class struggled with a sluggish economy, Milwaukee public school teachers were rewarded for their political support by getting a 5% pay increase for the current school year.
Compared to the producer class, Milwaukee’s teachers are getting a pretty sweet deal. When school is in session, teachers work almost 4 hours less each week than the standard private sector employee does. And instead of getting the usual two weeks off each year, Milwaukee teachers enjoy nearly 14 weeks vacation. All told, the typical producer-class employee works well over 600 hours a year more than the typical government school employee.
You would think with this workload, total compensation for government teachers would be a lot less than for private-sector workers. But when you add salary, retirement and health benefits, a first-year teacher’s total compensation is almost $56 per contracted hour worked. For a fifth-year teacher, it’s over $60 an hour. A tenth year teacher, more than $66 an hour. And teachers can retire sooner, too, at age 57.
If that sounds generous to you, you’re not alone. Producer-class workers earn less than $735 a week. For a typical 40-hour week, that works out to just over $18 an hour.
Of course, there’s a cost to all this generosity. If you’re in the producer class, you’re working harder than ever to pay for it all. And yet, mobs of government workers have besieged the capital for months, complaining that you’re not working hard enough, that you need to pay even more.
Government employees make up a small sliver of Wisconsin’s workforce, just 14%, and it’s time they stopped pushing the other 86% of us around.
Next time you see government employees demanding that you sacrifice even more for them, remind them that a public servant is supposed to serve the public, not turn the public into their servants.
Nice, very nice.
Nice, very nice.
The clash is coming and you've outlined the sides perfectly. As soon as enough of the private sector workers realizes how much they are slaves to the government sector a civil war will ensue. Why civil war you say? Because you've seen what happens in Wisconsin when public sector employees are told they are going to have to work a little harder. Imagine when the private sector has seen the light and DEMANDS we stop paying the public sector anything other than equal compensation or even less.
eXCELLENT ARTICLE! tHANKS!
It will be interesting in the next few years, here in California, to see thousands of retired government workers sitting on their front porches in rocking chairs, collecting 6 figure pensions, while the rest of us slog off to work under a 25% sales tax rate, dealing with a rapidly deteriorating infrastructure.
I wonder how long this will last.
Ordinary working people can understand, if the "slavery to government" ideas of Obama are clearly articulated.
The real "class" distinction is between political power beneficiaries and those who must work to support them, as is illustrated by recent GSA and other events. That distinction is not simply a difference in earnings. It is a distinction between slavery (tyranny) and liberty, for the very definition of "government," is coercive power.
Advice to GOP: get the best minds on board to communicate that message, shine the light of knowledge, and "the People" will be able to see past the "hope and change" and promises of "goodies."
"Ideas have consequences" (Weaver), and the consequences of allowing imperfect men and women in positions of power in government to dictate the conditions, control, and use of the hard-earned wages of the rest of us (whether janitors or billionnaires) leads to slavery to that power center.
On the other hand, look at what happened in America, under the influence of what Madison (called the "father" of our Constitution limiting government power) described as a "benign" government!
The Miracle of America
from
axes and hoes to high technology;
log cabins to air-conditioned condos;
horsedrawn wagons to autos, planes, and rockets;
scarcity to abundance; &
from tyrannical government rule to individual liberty*
*(Excerpted from a message published in the mid-1980’s by Stedman Corporation’s Government Affairs & Free Enterprise Education Program – a former NC textile firm. For more essays in this series, visit www.ouragelessconstitution.com )
By the way, in addition to my observations in the previous post, the following two quotations from Thomas Jefferson will document the wisdom of America's founding generation about what Obama and so-called "progressives" are trying to do to America:
"I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing by every device the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:77
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Is that not exactly what Obama's policy of government jobs creation is doing?--"hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers"--all to purchase votes which allow them to retain power for another four years?
Like my bumper sticker says, below a picture of Washington, Adams, Madison,and Jefferson: “The Original Right Wing Radicals”.
If those founders were alive today, they would be excoriated by the lib/progressives and the MSM as being right wing extremists.
The sad fact is that we have so few conservatives running for public office that are capable of a common sense political campaign that points out the facts in this article in a cheerful, engaging manner, and does so over and over again.
This is a very, very potent campaign theme, and we conservatives let it lie like an unused weapon.
Meanwhile the MSM and the lib/progressives spew their bizzaro world theme that it’s the private sector’s producers and achievers, who, but for the restraints of all the government public employees, rules and regulations, would rob us all and keep us from having a roaring economy and brighter future.
The libs/progressives completely ignore the voluntary nature of our every day transactions with these producers and achievers, while turning around and MANDATING our compliance with government rules, regulations, procedures.
Much to infrequently do we point out the great products/results of the private sector, or the complete lack of good products and dismal results of the government sector.
Lib/progressives completely miss or ignore the irony of voluntary, free market choices by individuals that enrich the producers/achievers vs. forced compliance/purchases of government fees/licenses/Obama-care-like products. This is another rich vein of political campaign material that is just waiting to be mined by conservatives.
We wait in vain for our conservative politicians and candidates, to use the truth reflected in this article to ridicule and skewer those liberal/progressive themes and the twits that repeat them, so that we can roar our approval.
We need conservative candidates and politicians that fight back much more effectively, damn it.
The burning question of the moment is: why cannot the Republican leadership and its spokesmen/women provide the common sense distinction between the tyrannical plantation mentality of the Democrat/progressive machine and the individual freedom/freedom of individual enterprise philosophy of America's Constitutional foundations?
The moral philosopher, Adam Smith, focused on how the wealth of nations is created by allowing free individuals to pursue their own interests and, thereby, benefit both themselves and their fellows. That was the philosophy America's Founders discovered and set into motion, and America literally became the breadbasket for the world, and the magnet that drew the oppressed bo these shores for a taste of freedom and opportunity.
Then, along came the power-hungry politicians who now identify themselves as being "progressive." They are destroying what has been known as "the American dream" and replacing it with the "Julia nightmare"--dependency and slavery to big government.
One would think that Republicans could wage a campaign of clarity and education which would expose and unmask the counterfeit ideas of Obama and his minions and use the Founders' own words to explain the principles of the Constitution.
Thoughts anyone?
Great question.
Newt does this better than anyone I’ve heard, but alas, he was not to be. Seems we prefer those who will not propose anything too “radical”, such as our constitutional founding principles.
I believe there is a lot of truth to the fact that we are no longer simply conservatives versus liberal/progressives, but now have a battle between the “ruling class” and the “country party” as explained by Angelo M. Codevilla in his most excellent American Spectator article in the July 2010 - August 2010 issue, “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution”. You can find it on-line, and it’s well worth your time to read it.
Waay too many of our RHINOs imagine themselves to be part of the “ruling class”, and really have no desire to return to limited government. They actively work to prevent election of Tea Party types, and immediatley “explain” their go-along-to-get-along style of governance to any newly elected Tea Party fire-brands.
All we can do is to keep throwing out the libs/progressives/RHINOs, and voting in the conservatives.
Heck, we ought to bite the bullet and run ourselves, but that is a sacrifice too many of us are not willing to make.
Perhaps Scott Walker communicated to Wisconsin citizen/taxpayers the insanity of allowing government employees and their big-union bosses to be in the position of buying elected officials and then "bargaining" with the same bought-and-paid-for elected officials in order to "take" excessive amounts of money and benefits from the citizen/taxpayers whose productivity provides the money for their profligate ways.
Now, on to every other state in the nation with a message that there is no such thing as "government" or "federal" money. All of it must first be confiscated by coercive means (taxing, printing, borrowing, etc.) from the productive individuals who create the wealth of nations.
It's all about individual freedom. Charlatans of both parties may disguise their motives, but any scheme which allows government to do that which is illegal for individuals to do to one another is, under the U. S. Constitution, not a valid constitutional use of power.
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