08/18/10 Tampa, Florida – The US Bureau of Economic Analysis, an “official” source of news, reported what everybody has already known: Government worker compensation in now an average of more than $120,000, or about twice as much as the average private sector worker making less than $60,000.
I find this particularly interesting because I get a chance to answer some of my critics, who say to me, “Bah! Even though you are absolutely right about the foul Federal Reserve and how their continually creating more and more money is going to ignite an inflation in prices that will destroy us, and you are entirely correct that buying gold, silver and oil are terrific bargains right now because of it, and you are completely spot-on that Obama and Congress are repugnant socialist morons, but you are not as handsome as you think you are, and a lot more stupid, too. And lazy. For instance, you never do any real work.”
So, I now shut these complaining, nasty people up by doing a little “investigative research,” in this case to expose more obvious, odious, lying Democrat partisan-bias in PolitiFact.com, a popular feature that purports to be “sorting out the truth in politics.” They even have a little Truth-O-Meter to show how truthful something was! Oooh!
The story is that last February, which was six months ago, I was looking through the newspaper and was stunned to read where a PolitiFact.com staff writer named Catharine Richert took issue with US Senator Scott Brown saying that “Federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts.”
She looked and found that, sure enough, federal employees made an average wage of $79,197, versus $50,028 for private-sector workers. Then, by completely ignoring the overly-generous benefit packages that government employees enjoy, and thus take the total compensation disparity over 100%, as per Sen. Brown’s claim, she instead rates the claim “false” because government wages, alone, are not twice as high as private wages!
Not “partially true.” Not “slightly true.” False!
The little Truth-O-Meter icon had the red arrow pegged to the left, and “FALSE” written in big, big letters to make sure you got the point.
So much for PolitiFact.com, as far as I am concerned.
Too bad neither she nor the other Politic-Fact morons rated the veracity of The Mogambo saying, “The neo-Keynesian econometric idiocy of the Federal Reserve that has defined American expansionist monetary policy for the last half-century is a Big, Stinking Load Of Crap (BSLOC), the Democratic Party’s stupid idea that government is supposed to spend its time constantly expanding entitlements and ‘helping people’ by spending more and more money on them and literally giving them money, goods and services is another Big, Stinking Load Of Crap (BSLOC), and the only thing that is NOT a Big, Stinking Load Of Crap (BSLOC) around here, as far as I can tell, is the terrific advice of The Fabulous Mogambo (TFB) to buy gold, silver and oil to protect yourself and prosper as a result of these two idiocies, which makes it all so easy that you involuntarily smile and say to yourself, ‘Whee! This investing stuff is easy!’”
And, if she, or they, had really, really looked at the last 4,500 years of history and how gold has gone up 500% in the last ten years while the stock markets haven’t gained a dime, their precious little Truth-O-Meter would have pegged out as “Completely True.”
And easy, too! Whee!
The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning
The Mogambo Guru
Richard Daughty (Mogambo Guru) is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise to better heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning , and other fine publications. For podcasts featuring the Mogambo, click here.
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Yeah, the local red-rag (St.Pete Times) used one of politifact’s findings to “prove” that hiring IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR was up in March/April. Of course to show the 241,000 jobs added they had to use the .GOV census hiring-~2000,00 jobs – without noting that most of those jobs had been gone by time that “truth-finding had been written.
It’s not an economy, its a factory farm… with a buffet.. that we pay for ourselves….
I repeat: If you compare rocket scientist to rocket scientest, and nuclear physicist to nuclear physicist, government workers now and always have been paid less than 80% of the equivalent in the private sector. Reason for the disparity the Mighty Mogambo cites? The government outsources almost all menial labor (excepting, for example, whoever empties the trash at CIA HQ). They also outsource rocket science, etc., which costs more, but is good policy since some of these guys subsequently risk it all on ventures the gov has no business doing.
So gumment scientologist, then we must accept that the BEA is lying to us?
If the government outsources labor, then you can’t very well compare apples of labor NOT working for the government to oranges of labor working for it, no?
Government out sources labour, so that the government officials can officially be buttered up, wined and dinned by the private sector. It also give scope for lovely back handers to boot.
In England they call it Public Private Partnership, in Magabo land the same practice is know as Private Public Pillage or PPP for short.
I really must look up Magabo land on the map, and see if it excepts worldly wise workers.
Model T:
The point is the AVERAGEs are not comparable. The statistics are accurate, but they are averages of very different pools of workers. The private sector includes all of the car washers and dog walkers. If you’re annoyed now, just imagine how pissed you’d be if the government actually DID employ pancake flippers. (No offense to pancake flippers, that’s how I paid for my engineering degree.)
The idea that government workers are so highly paid is put forward by the Tea Party types, but it is a misleading fact. First, it’s not that government workers are doing so well but rather that private employees are doing so poorly. After all of the union busting, the majority of union workers are government employees. Also, government employees tend to be older and more educated than private sector employees. Compared to private employees of the same age and education, government workers are paid less. I think that’s what gunment scientist is saying about comparing different pools of workers. Folks just want to scapegoat government workers for the government going broke, but really, what about the handouts to all of these Wall Street firms that then give multi million dollar bonuses to executives who are, by an objective standard, failures.
Gumment scientist said that salaries and benefits are higher in the private sector. OK, then it stands to reason that private sector jobs should be growing faster than government sector jobs. Sadly, that’s not the case.
The only explanation for that contradiction is that one private sector guy is hired at $120K/year and two or more government guys are hired at $110/year.
gumment scientologist:
Pancake flippers I would be happy with.
They make something tasty that I enjoy, as opposed to, say, an IRS agent that exists only to take away something that belongs to me and threatens to penalize and take even more of that something if I mess up.
Jason makes another good point. I was hired after the end of a long hiring freeze….only because everyone was about to retire and there would be no one to train the new employees. That was almost 30 years ago, and the same thing is happening again. We’re hiring tons of new people because the “slug” I’m in is retiring.
So part of the equation is that there is a huge percentage of the government workforce that is at their peak salary. When we’re gone, the average salary should take a significant dip.
Having said all that. One thing I think we can all agree on is that we need some way to ensure government programs have some sort of sunset requirement. Departments just don’t “go out of business” when their usefullness wains, like private businesses do….don’t see many buggy makers around now, do we?
So, you’re not gonna post my comments… nah nah nah… I think it’s funny because only I have all the answers!
oh, gumment scientist, they’re is a sunset law, it’s woven in with the mathematics, it’s sovereign default… luckily for you after posting a mad max solution for the gubment, I figured out the necessary accounting to continue on our formerly merry way at a less decreased level…
unluckily for you, nobody will talk to me and know what to do when their civilization is ending…