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Reining In Government Employment Before It Reins Us In

“Unless you have a terrific talent for something like hitting a ball or trading commodity futures, the private sector is a mug’s game; and this was, sad but not surprising to record, more true at the end of GWB’s eight years than at the beginning.” - - John Derbyshire

It ought to be a conservative priority to bring public-employee pay and levels of employment into some rational relation with what the Federal, state and local governments should be doing.

Otherwise tax-predator public-employee-unions will live off tax-producing businesses and individuals until the free-market system and thus our own freedom is destroyed in the process.

Last Thursday National Review on Line’s (NRO) John Derbyshire in his “GET A GOVERNMENT JOB!” here cites a Reuter’s article “Washington, D.C. favorite area for wealthy young” here - -

“Loudoun county, which is part of the Washington metropolitan area, has 10 percent, or 10,327 young adults, making more than six figures — more than San Francisco and New York in terms of percentage of the population.”

Columnist Derbyshire declares - -

“If you’re not working for the feddle gummint either directly (Assistant to Administrative Assistant Grade 3(a) in the U.S. Department of Administrative Assistance) or indirectly (lobbying, lawyering, feeding the beast, or living on bailout subsidies) you are a loser chump. Write out 100 times: THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS FOR LOSER CHUMPS. Then, go beg a bureaucrat for a job.”  (Emphasis in original.)

In a later post here also last Thursday, he reports in “Government Thrives!” - -

“(1)  From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

The George W. Bush years were very lucrative for federal workers. In 2000, the average compensation (wages and benefits) of federal workers was 66 percent higher than the average compensation in the U.S. private sector. The new data show that average federal compensation is now more than double the average in the private sector …

(Thanks to a pal in Charlotte, N.C., for that.) Then

(2)  Tom Piatak over at Takimag picked up the same story I had. Tom notes that:

Of the 50 counties in the United States with the highest percentage of people aged 25-34 making over $100,000 per year, sixteen of them were in the Washington area, and only two counties not near Washington or a state capital made the top ten.

As Tom further remarked to me in an offline exchange, many of our state capitals have become mini-D.C.s. In Ohio, for example, Columbus is the only part of the state doing well.(Underscoring Forum’s)

Cato’s Chris Edwards recommendation here has, in our view, great merit - -

“It’s time to put a stop to this. Federal wages should be frozen for a period of years, at least until the private-sector economy has recovered and average workers start seeing some wage gains of their own.”

For those activities the Federal government arguably should be doing - - ranging from the “common defense,” to encouraging the development, side-by-side with the states, of the nation’s infrastructure, to overseeing a prudent national “safety net,” the US agencies need to be able to hire (and let go or retain) capable men and women based on sound business practices and genuinely competitive salaries, not rigid civil-service rules and inflated compensation packages.

But to hire, for example, more and more young men and women to serve an expanding (but below the radar) regulatory state at ever-increasing wage schedules makes no sense.

Readers will find the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State” here a revealing document.

One can see here the growth in enforcement budgets and in “economically significant [with at least $100 million in economic impact] rules.” 

Of course, the expansion of the Federal Establishment lies in program as well as regulatory areas.

But consider what is happening now:  universities and colleges, infused with political correctness, accustom students to restricted political speech, as Michael Barone points out here this morning.

Many of these students then move on to some of the best-paying jobs now available — in the Federal government, or as Steven Malanga explains in the larger state or local governments as the case may be.

Malanga here points out that —

“[T]he real power of the public sector is showing through in this economic crisis. Some five million private-sector workers have lost their jobs in the last year alone, and their unemployment rate is above 9% according to the BLS. By contrast, public-sector employment has grown in virtually every month of the recession,and the jobless rate for government workers is a mere 2.8%.” (Underscoring Forum’s)

None of these developments augurs well for the strengthening of our liberties or our enterprises. Conservatives can’t realistically expect Maryland or Virginia incumbents or candidates to confront public-employee unions head-on. We shall have to do whatever heavy listing must be done ourselves.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 28! The Free Enterprise Nation reports here (H/T NRO’s John Derbyshire) - - “As researchers for The Free Enterprise Nation began compiling information about the pay and benefits disparity that exists between government/public education and those who work in the private sector, we’d hear an occasional “OH, MY GOSH!” or “OH, MY!” as they found another reference to shocking pay and benefits practices in the public sector. It might have been the first time they saw a State of California pensioner retiring at $500,000 a year…or perhaps the Illinois driver’s training teacher earning $170,000 a year and retiring at $130,000 a year…or perhaps the New York City workers who amass more than $100,000 in overtime in their last year before retirement, triggering a pension benefit in excess of their salary.”

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