Most public sector employees have no idea what a real job is, what it means to truly suffer, and have not the faintest clue what "strife" is.
I've never seen government budgets cut in REAL TERMS (none of this "decrease in the increase" bullshit they pass on as if you cut off their right arm), and I've never seen massive layoffs as has occurred in the private sector. I've also never seen anything approach real work and real rigor. The adult-children working as government baby-sitters, euphemistically called "teachers," make it seem like they have the "most difficult job on the planet," when in reality they are weak, they are wimps, and they are pansies.
I know myself and the three other private sectors workers in the country have had an infinitely more difficult time than our public sector
The public sector? HA!
I YEARN for the day to see in the newspaper "Minneapolis Public Schools lay off 25% of their employees."
I would LOVE to see on the Drudge Report, "Department of Health forced to restructure to cut costs by 30%."
Just ONCE I'd like to see the public sector pansies walk a mile in their private-sector brother's shoes.
Instead you see this insipid cry-babying from genuine children who just happened to have hit puberty 30 years ago.
Thankfully, this system cannot go on forever. And it won't. The day will come that the public sector will have to cut back or not receive anything at all. Politicians will of course use it as a voting block/Keynesian-failed-stimulus tool until that time, but you can't have a country where the entirety of GDP is comprised of:
Teachers
Social workers
AFSCME janitors
Case managers
Cops
Firefighters
DOT workers
You need the private sector because ALL wealth comes from it.
The rest of you are factually economically parasitical. Could you please stop being cry-babies on top of it?
well purty soon it'll just be cops (DOJ, HS, FEMA etc etc) vs. all other guys, so that should simplify yr dilemma somewhat
ReplyDeletecheers
O often wonder what is the future of jobs that look easy, mostly sitting on a chair.
ReplyDeleteDetroit might answer your prayers. A lot of retired public sector workers may rightfully lose their pensions.
ReplyDeleteWhere's HR?
ReplyDeleteCaptain,
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right. I started out as a social worker, then went to law school. The only real job I could get was in a state agency. Pretty good, so far! Every office I've ever worked in was at least twice over-staffed, that is, when they had any work at all to do.
But I had a family, and salaries kept going up. Now I'm close to retirement. I do wonder how my contribution to GDP could ever be calculated. What was the square root of -1 again?
You, also, are doing a public service!
While I'm no fan of cops (I think they cause more problems than they solve) a bunch of them went into the WTC knowing full well that they probably wouldn't come out. And firefighters have a dirty, dangerous job; don't paint them with the same brush as DHS drones.
ReplyDeletePublic sector employees are just enjoying the decline. Good for them.
ReplyDeletePublic sector will be the last jobs standing when the economy crashes. Local govt. jobs first to go, then state, then federal. The gravy train will keep chugging until it spills over the cliff with the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of your points, but it's hard to lump cops and prosecutors in NYC with say, your typical useless Department of Energy bureaucrat. Law enforcement in major cities often work 50-60 hour weeks, and go years without raises so that the community is safe. That has real economic value. And unlike most government work, law enforcement cannot be done better by the private sector.
ReplyDeleteI've been working in the public sector (US Army) all my adult life and totally agree. If it is any consolation, the US Army will be cutting 100K people from the ranks this year. That is just from the active force. So the idea that "it never happens to the federal govt" is observably wrong.
ReplyDeleteA coworker of mine left the company, where we had relatively easy work (standing outside in the Central Valley sun all day isn't a picnic, but none of us had to do that very often) to work for the city where he lived. Cut his one-way commute from 90 minutes to 15, and made a little more money, both nice things when you have little kids.
ReplyDeleteAnd every time we talked to him, he was getting in trouble for working too hard.
Roger
ReplyDeleteThe cops love overtime and their Union tends to overschedule them in the years before retirenment so they get bigger pensions. Its called spiking. Federal workers need 50% paycuts to bring them in line with private sector workers. State and local need 30-40% pay cuts. In fact you can argue it should be bigger paycuts since they essentially can't be fired. Child molestors are defended by Unions because they pay Union dues and the kids don't. The great myth is taht being a cop is dangerous. Per BLS staistics its less dangerous than a truck driver
And unlike most government work, law enforcement cannot be done better by the private sector.
ReplyDeleteExcept when it is. In every case where security and crime prevention are too important to leave to the government, people hire private security. Body guards for celebrities. Night watchmen. Gated community guards. Even the private security firms that guard government facilities
It's easy, and very popular I might add, to cast all public sector workers as lazy, unmotivated and unskilled workers who couldn't make it in the private sector. As someone who works inside the asylum, it is true that there are a non-trivial number of folks who fit that description.
ReplyDeleteIt is equally true that there are also professionals who are diligent in their work and actually try to find efficiencies and use resources responsibly. Some of us are trying to change the culture from the inside, because there are some things that really should not be farmed out to the private sector. I work in IT for the Canadian Government, and to be frank some of my co-workers and I nearly killed ourselves when we heard that that Paragon of Private Sector efficiency, CGI, had been brought in to set up the IT system for Obamacare. We've had experience with them - they were the same folks responsible for the design and implementation of the (thankfully now killed)Long Gun Registry in Canada. Sure, they were a couple of Billion dollars over budget, and a couple of years late. I suppose that's okay because they're in the Private sector.
I believe that there are limits to how big government should be and what they should be doing. Personally, I wouldn't want my tax or employment data (for example) ending up on some server in Uzbekistan because CorpX won the contract to handle it and they decided to move their server farms there after winning the contract.
Um, ever hear if the security flaws in the obamacare site?
DeleteDon't forget all the 'government' workers in the private sector. As refuge of engineering consulting, some of those big companies like HDR, Bechtel, and such do quiet a bit of work for local, state, and federal government.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the private sector employee who runs air models for electric utilities to determine whether they should support or not a new air regulation. Or those who work to comply with government crap for OSHA, EPA, and such.
Sylia, discussing CGI
ReplyDelete"We've had experience with them - they were the same folks responsible for the design and implementation of the (thankfully now killed)Long Gun Registry in Canada. Sure, they were a couple of Billion dollars over budget, and a couple of years late. I suppose that's okay because they're in the Private sector."
No, "That's okay, because they are working on a govt contract"
If they try that shit with a company like WalMart, we'd watch the non-performance suit slap them silly.
A private company who works for the government as a contractor is not entirely "private sector".
ReplyDelete