By Carter Clews
Chris Edwards, the Cato Institute’s top maven on federal budget issues, has just published a highly revealing article on federal pay scales that will make most people’s blood boil – except, of course, for federal bureaucrats who are too busy dozing off in their easy chairs to read anything other than the occasional comic page and the union news raise reviews.
You see, it turns out that Washington’s pointy-headed, bottom-feeding bureaucrats — whose sole job it is to run up everyone else’s taxes by saddling us all with oppressive regulations and endless reams of red tape — get paid on average $30,000 a year more than those of you who actually work for a living and produce a useful product.
That’s right: while you’re out working your butt off to make a barely livable wage (which is then taxed down to the poverty level), a bunch of bumptious bureaucrats in Washington are living the high life on the money siphoned out of your paycheck to keep them fat and happy.
How’s that for getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick – by a bunch of bloated slackers laughing all the way to the bank at your expense?
Here are the facts, pure and simple:
According to the federal government’s own Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average federal bureaucrat pushing papers in some comfy government office now makes $79,197 a year – as compared to just $49,935 for the hardworking Americans toiling in the vineyards to make the tax dollars lining the bureaucrats’ coffers.
Got that? They make $79,197 a year. You make $49,935.
You work at a real-life, work-a-day job that actually produces a saleable product at the end of the shift. They “work” (and I use the term loosely) in a government-contrived “position” (all federal “jobs” are known as “positions” – as in “Position open for fat, lazy slob to sleep from 9:00 to 5:00 undisturbed in comfy, cozy cubical. No experience required.”) where they play video games on a government computer for which you paid, when they’re not otherwise occupied listening to the radio or talking on their cell phones.
And for this, they make nearly 40% more per year than you. They — who have awesome benefits, every holiday known to man, and iron-clad job security — leave you – whose benefits shrivel like shrink wrap, who is lucky to get off Christmas Day, and who wonders whether you’ll still have your job this time next week – suck their new car exhaust. But, wait, it gets worse.
Since 2000, the average pay for these world-class pikers is up 55% — as compared to just 29% wage growth in the private sector (i.e., you). And, remember, this doesn’t even take into account the federal bureaucrats’ incredible health benefits covering everything from a hangnail to a bad hair day.
Okay, I’m going to stop here. If you’re not already wondering what in Hades is going on when a bunch of shiftless paper-pushers – running up your tax tab — already get more money a year than you’re likely to make in the next decade, then there’s probably nothing more I can say to get you riled up enough to grab a torch and pitch folk and storm the Bastille.
But, I will add this: almost every single one of the millions of new “jobs” Barack Obama has promised to “create” over the next few years will be “positions” for federal employees. So, unless you want to pay every single cent of your real-world, work-a-day job salary in taxes in the very near future, you’d better get darn busy eliminating Barack Obama’s cushy federal job lickety-split.
Now is your blood boiling?
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News.
