BF2S Forums Federal workers earning double their private counterparts

It's been known for a long time that the private sector pays better. It's just that the government has better job security and benefits.

(Well, at least in the engineering industry)

mtb0minime wrote:

It's been known for a long time that the private sector pays better. It's just that the government has better job security and benefits.

(Well, at least in the engineering industry)

Not any more.

I don't know anybody anymore who makes 200k per year.
The scales have tipped.

• Should the city manager of Bell, a 2.6-square-mile city in Los Angeles County, make $800,000 per year and be guaranteed 12 percent annual raises in the midst of a terrible economy and high private unemployment?

• Should Orange County’s convicted felon ex-sheriff continue to collect at least $217,000 in pension every year until death?

• Should police officers in OC be allowed to retire at the age of 50 and collect 90 percent of their top salary (plus regular cost-of-living raises) for the rest of their lives?

• Should cops and other government retirees be allowed to continue to double-dip—retire from one agency, collect full pension benefits, and then join another government agency to collect another salary and pension?

• Should the public accept that eight in 10 California Highway Patrol officers claim a “disabling injury” to take early retirement perks that include shielding half of their retirement from taxes?

• Should a public pension-investment lobbyist collect “consulting fees” as high as $53 million for a single transaction?

• Should taxpayers have been forced to give a retired OC sanitation-district employee $244,359 in annual pension pay?

• Is it right that Orange County citizens are on the hook to pay more than $3.7 billion in unfunded retirement benefits for county workers? Or that California taxpayers are strapped with a half-trillion-dollar liability for state-government employee pensions?

“It is not the job of individual taxpayers to evaluate the performance of public employees,” says Prevatt, a 2004 delegate to the Democratic National Convention. “That is between the employee and their manager.”

http://www.ocweekly.com/2010-08-05/news … eenhunt/2/

Harmor wrote:

Unless you're in the military, a first-responder, or any position that the Federal Government is Constitutionally required to defend this country you probably should have your federal job replaced by a private alternative.

Well, for the most part, that's already been happening for the last few decades.  Even military functions are much more privatized than they used to be.

The USPS is actually in the process of transitioning into a fully private corporation.  I'm not sure exactly when the transition will complete, but it's much more privatized now than it was a few decades ago.

NASA is apparently becoming more privatized as well.

And like jsnipy implied, a lot of the government's work is being done more and more by private contractors.

We see this even on local levels.  A lot of the time, we think of the EMS as a governmental function; however, in my city of Greensboro, most of our emergency services are actually privately run.  We still have government run fire departments, but nearly all of our ambulances are private.

FEMA may eventually be replaced with private alternatives as well, after the disastrous response during Katrina, and the comparatively better response by Red Cross.

Last edited by Turquoise (2010-08-12 11:10:21)