POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Obamanomics: The Parasite Is More Important Than the Host

From The Washington Times:

Employment is up, wages are up, and job security is as firm as ever. Unfortunately, this is only true for federal government workers.

President Obama is presiding over the largest federal work force in decades. In the current fiscal year, the number of civilian workers will grow by 153,000, to 1.43 million. These are the only jobs Mr. Obama can legitimately claim to have created. Unfortunately, they are subsidized by deficit spending.

Federal positions are not shovel-ready make-work jobs, either. Working for Uncle Sam pays extremely well these days. Government employment used to be a calling, a career in which a sense of fulfillment from public service offset low pay and spartan working conditions. Not so today. According to a study by the Cato Institute, 2008 federal worker pay-and-benefits packages averaged $119,982. That's more than double the private-sector average of $59,909.

The ranks of the highest-paid federal workers are growing fast. A report in USA Today indicated massive growth in the number of pre-benefit six-figure federal salaries. For example, the number of people earning $170,000 or more in the Transportation Department went from one in December 2007 to 1,690 by June 2009. The average above-salary "performance bonus" for federal senior executives in 2008 was $14,831. We doubt these inflated salaries and awards are buying Americans the best government in history.

And Obama would prefer that they were unionized. Mickey Kaus:

In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.

[W]e also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were initially recommended for firing, but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight. Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining. [E.A.]

That's less than one attempted firing a year. Why? Mainly because firings---and the bad performance evaluations that precede them---are almost invariably contested by the union.

Meanwhile, in beggared California, a judge says that the Governator doesn't have the right to furlough state employees:

An Alameda County Superior Court judge Thursday ordered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to halt thrice-monthly furloughs for tens of thousands of state workers, saying the administration overstepped its authority in approving the unpaid days off.

It's not unlike the extraconstitutional provision that Harry Reid wants to work into Health Care Reform that would require a supermajority to undo the work of a reconciliation minority, even though reconciliation was never designed to create a new entitlement. The relation of government to taxpayers in the United States has never been more abusive. Mother, may I?

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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