Public Employees and Robert B. Reich

Reich thinks the GOP is scapegoating public employees.  I think they set themselves up to be scapegoated.


Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar even as corporations refuse to hire more workers.

This is the typical class warfare that Reich and the Left have become so good at.  Public servants produce nothing.  Zero, zip, zilch, nada.  Yet they do provide some essential services.  But those services are paid for by the taxpayers and public employees have done a really good job of biting the hand that feeds them.  It is the right of a private business to hire who they wish, when they wish to hire.  The current wave of non-hiring is because of the "Progressive" policies of this administration and the uncertainty it brings.


It's far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public's work - sanitation workers, police officers, firefighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees - to call them "faceless bureaucrats" and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling budgets. 

Obviously, Reich has never been to a contentious school board meeting, where teachers demand more money for a failing system and taxpayers are treated to, "We'll get it because we want it".  Apparently, he's never been to the DMV or dealt with the Internal Revenue Service.  He's never had to deal with the head of Homeland Security who refuses to secure the southern border of the United States (for God knows what reason), even though the citizens are calling for it.



They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That's untrue when you take into account
level of education. Matched by education, public-sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.


The Republican trick is to compare apples to oranges - the average wage of public employees with the average wage of private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be - all need at least four years of college.



The Republican trick is to compare apples to oranges - the average wage of public employees with the average wage of private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be - all need at least four years of college.

But the trick is by Reich.  The grossly overpaid positions are the unskilled and those of teachers.  In the school district in which I reside, teachers start, fresh out of college with a Bachelor of Science in Education at $40,000 for nine months of work.  That annualizes to $50,000 per year.  That exceeds the average starting salary for most non-technical (Mathematics, Engineering, Science) fields.  For a failing system.  Include the benefit package for public employees and the "30-and-out" that many receive and the system is far out of balance.



Here's another whopper: Republicans say public-sector pensions are crippling the nation. They say politicians have given in to the demands of public unions that want only to fatten members' retirement benefits without the public noticing. They charge that public-employee pension obligations are out of control.


But Reich himself indicates it's not really a whopper:



Some reforms do need to be made. Loopholes that allow public-sector workers to "spike" their final salaries in order to get higher annuities must be closed. And no retired public employee should be allowed to "double dip," collecting more than one public pension.


The solution is no less to slash public pensions than it is to slash private ones. It's for all employers to fully fund their pension plans.
This is just untrue.  No one is proposing "slashing" current pension obligations.  The intent is to cut future liabilites by having public employees (especially teachers) to contribute to their retirement.  That is not asking too much.


But isn't it curious that when it comes to sacrifice, Republicans don't include the richest people in America? To the contrary, they insist that the rich should sacrifice even less, enjoying even larger tax cuts that expand public-sector deficits. That means fewer public services, and even more pressure on the wages and benefits of public employees.


Larger tax cuts?  What "larger tax cuts" have been proposed?  Why does the Left and people like Reich feel it is necessary to continue to browbeat those who have achieved?  There is no Progressive socio-economic policy they can point to that is successful.  Welfare and associated policies and iterations is a failure.  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are failures.  All have cost more and done less than intended.  Public schools are a failure.  No attempt has been made to fix any of these, only to throw more money at them.  50 years of experience show this to be the wrong answer.  But the Progs continue to claim they are smarter than the rest of us.  I think not.