Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute devoted the time and and effort to analyze salary and benefits information published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This is the kind of reporting we don’t get from the mass media, because it requires critical thinking.
Chris’s results are depressing, if not surprising:
“In 2008, federal worker compensation averaged a remarkable $119,982, which was more than double the private sector average of $59,909.”
In short, our “public servants” are fleecing us.
If you ignore their plush taxpayer-funded benefits packages, these civilian paper pushers are still being paid almost $30k more than the poor schmucks who are paying their salaries. The average American is paid $49,935, while the average bureaucrat is paid an astounding $79,197.
These federal government bureaucrats are paid more than Americans in such competitive and difficult fields as:
- Computer system design
- Computer manufacturing
- Legal services
- Information and data processing
- Publishing and software
While I am certain that it is exhausting and complex work to process forms and hand out welfare checks, I do not believe that it requires a level of skill which justifies these ridiculous levels of compensation.
The federal deficit is now well above thirteen trillion dollars and rising at a record pace . We need to see serious pay cuts for federal workers until they achieve parity with the private sector.
Continued Growth
Since 2000, pay for Americans has increased an average of 8.8%. At the same time, pay for federal government employees has increased by 36.9% — more than four times as fast.
Federal government employees have received larger average pay and benefit increases than private employees every year for the last nine straight years.
The net effect of this uncontrolled spending is that the gap between what Americans are paid and what we pay our “public servants” has more than doubled since 2000. In 2000, federal employees enjoyed a $30,415 advantage over people working in the private sector, by 2009 this number had risen to $61,998. The average working stiff earned $61,051 in total compensation in 2009. The comparable number for federal government employees — a staggering $123,049.
The worst part of this is that the majority of existing federal workers are doing “jobs” which are unauthorized by the United States Constitution. Even if we manage to cut their fat salaries by half, we will still have more than a million unnecessary federal employees whose “contribution” to the U.S. economy consists mainly of creating forms for the rest of us to fill out.
It seems clear to me now, as it should be to you, that the federal bureaucrats are America’s new ruling class and that ordinary taxpayers are their unwilling slaves.
