If I'm a "New" Welfare Queen, Why Aren't I Rich?

[talon]

http://www.bnet.com/blog/innovator/the-1-step-to-improving-government/211?tag=content;drawer-container

" Government jobs aren't "real" jobs. Public service is for people who can't cut it in the private sector. Or, as The New Republic memorably put it (in an article defending public employees), teachers and firefighters have become "the new welfare queens.""

Both of these are actually in support of public employees, but they are addressing the issue that politicians (themselves public employees!) are turning public employees into Teh Eeebbil Ones, sucking taxes dry to fund high and mighty lifestyles, that they're all slackers and lazy and stupid.

But without public employees, you wouldn't have roads, safe drinking water, a decent education (many people would never have gotten to college without their public school education, and quite a few of the college students wouldn't have gotten in without federal financial aid in the form of Pell Grants and other financial aid), and other things. We wouldn't have police to track down criminals or fireman to put out fires.

I think we can more easily do without politicians than we can the county clerk.

All the public employees I know have post high school educations, most are older people bringing their years of experience to the public sector to improve things.

As with all things, the public sector is behind the private sector when it comes to innovations both good and bad. When I first started working, employees in the private sector had much better guaranteed retirement plans, but those were gutted to provide better pay and severance packages for the upper management. In the public sector, those retirements were kept because there was no upper management to gut the retirements of the average employee. Rather than be pissed that public sector employees have guaranteed (albeit small - mine will be a whopping $400 a month!) retirements, people should be asking why private sector employees don't still have them.

I can tell you in one word why they don't: Greed.

And now the politicians are so greedy they don't want the low-earning government employees getting the retirements they've worked decades for (most public employees must work a minimum of 30 years to get their retirement) while they continue to rake in the big bucks, the huge retirement plans and the absolutely awesome health insurance they deny all the rest of us.

I think instead of being pissed at public employees in general, we should be pissed at the greedy politicians because they truly are the welfare queens of the country.