[luke warm]

 hrothgar, on 2010-December-16, 13:09, said:

Like delivering mail to "unprofitable" parts of the country...

can you ship ups to those places? i don't know where you're talking about

 kenberg, on 2010-December-16, 14:39, said:

Your secret is safe with me!

good, i'd hate for it to get out

 awm, on 2010-December-16, 16:16, said:

This is just not true.

 Rodney26, on 2010-December-16, 16:36, said:

Sorry, it's true.

http://www.usatoday....dpay10_ST_N.htm

federaljobs.net actually uses the gap as a recruiting technique.

i'm confused

[hrothgar]

 Rodney26, on 2010-December-16, 16:36, said:

Sorry, it's true.

http://www.usatoday....dpay10_ST_N.htm

federaljobs.net actually uses the gap as a recruiting technique.

The article that you are quoting has been wildly criticized on precisely the same grounds that I stated.
It ignores education and job type.

Moreover, "federaljobs.net" is do precisely the same type of unstratified analysis.

No one is disputing that well educated federal works are paid well.
The issue is whether this is an "apples to apples" comparison.

Its not

[hrothgar]

 luke warm, on 2010-December-16, 16:44, said:

can you ship ups to those places? i don't know where you're talking about

How much does UPS charge to ship a letter to North Dakota?
(Looks to be about $23...)

[hrothgar]

 awm, on 2010-December-16, 16:22, said:

This is not right either. Using your own data, the US government payroll was $15 BILLION for the month. That's about 6,000 per employee, so that really is the monthly (not yearly) payroll. Yearly payroll would be twelve times that, or about $180 Billion. The CEOs make about $500 Million, or only 1/360 as much as the government workers. That's nowhere remotely close to a third.

damn decimal points

[awm]

 Rodney26, on 2010-December-16, 16:36, said:

Sorry, it's true.

http://www.usatoday....dpay10_ST_N.htm

federaljobs.net actually uses the gap as a recruiting technique.

This has already been debunked here as well.

Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, very much in favor of cutting federal workers' pay and benefits, acknowledges that you have to consider the qualifications of these people and the jobs they are doing and you cannot blindly compare salaries. The fact of the matter is that the government workforce is much more highly educated (on average) than the private sector. Most of the difference in pay can be fully explained by differences in qualifications and experience. It's true that government benefits are better, perhaps because modern private sector benefit plans basically suck, and the federal pension program was put in place at a time when private sector benefits were a lot better than they are now.

[Rodney26]

 awm, on 2010-December-16, 18:32, said:

This has already been debunked here as well.

Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, very much in favor of cutting federal workers' pay and benefits, acknowledges that you have to consider the qualifications of these people and the jobs they are doing and you cannot blindly compare salaries. The fact of the matter is that the government workforce is much more highly educated (on average) than the private sector. Most of the difference in pay can be fully explained by differences in qualifications and experience. It's true that government benefits are better, perhaps because modern private sector benefit plans basically suck, and the federal pension program was put in place at a time when private sector benefits were a lot better than they are now.

Again, you said that federal workers are "basically middle class." They're not. They're an upper class portion of US society. The point is to debunk the myth that you're perpetrating that taxing the "wealthy" and distributing even more income to those that work for the federal government would be some sort of economically empowering move for the country. In reality, such a proposal would result in an already wealthy class of people getting even richer. That's where this whole Keynesian utopia goes completely off the rails frankly. Higher government revenues don't result in a fairer distribution of income between rich and poor; they just mean those that work for the government get paid more.

Reading hrothgar's screed about "equality of opportunity" while simultaneously defending the salaries of your average federal employee due to their education level was interesting. Do more people that come from wealth or poverty get the opportunity for extensive education? Do you think that your average federal employee comes from wealth or poverty given that your average employee has more years of education?

Private sector benefit plans have worsened because workers would prefer cash to benefits where given the choice. Government plans don't have competitive checks and balances so they tend to give away the store. As it is, I don't know how a private pension could reasonably be run today given that the Fed will drop interest rates to nothing as it sees fit. The public ones are going to start going up belly up in rapidly increasing numbers fairly soon.

[blackshoe]

I suppose you can define "middle class" and "upper class" however you like. All I can say is that the federal workers I've known came from many different walks of life, and most of them, save those in the upper echelons, were what I would call "middle class". I did have a squad mate in Vietnam who was independently wealthy (inherited money), and who enlisted because he felt it was the right thing to do, but he was a rarity, in my experience.

[helene_t]

 hrothgar, on 2010-December-16, 16:49, said:

The article that you are quoting has been wildly criticized on precisely the same grounds that I stated.
It ignores education and job type.

I get your point but this discussion was originally about the consequences, in terms of income redistribution, of cutting the number of federal employees. Here I think it is largely the overall income of federal workers that is relevant. Taking money from the educated (and therefore rich) and giving it to the uneducated (and therefore poor) is a progressive (no value judgment intended) action, although I suppose a better measure would be income after deduction of interests payed on college loans.

Anyway, I think this discussion is not particularly relevant to the income redistribution issue. Given some uncertainty about which segments of the federal workforce would be hit by (hypothetical) cuts, what alternative income those employees affected will get (heck, some laid-off civil servants might find better paid jobs in the private sector) and how the money saved (if any) will drip down on various types of taxpayers etc. I think it's heard to say anything about the net effect other than that it will probably be negligible.

[hrothgar]

 helene_t, on 2010-December-17, 04:45, said:

I get your point but this discussion was originally about the consequences, in terms of income redistribution, of cutting the number of federal employees. Here I think it is largely the overall income of federal workers that is relevant. Taking money from the educated (and therefore rich) and giving it to the uneducated (and therefore poor) is a progressive (no value judgment intended) action, although I suppose a better measure would be income after deduction of interests payed on college loans.

As I recall, the discussion started with the statement "most federal employees are middle class".
It then moved into a discussion about the average pay for Federal workers.

To my knowledge, no one has posted any information regarding the median or mode income of federal workers.

If you really want to contest Adam's original statement, the average(mean) income is pretty poor proxy.

[mgoetze]

 Rodney26, on 2010-December-16, 18:56, said:

The point is to debunk the myth that you're perpetrating that taxing the "wealthy" and distributing even more income to those that work for the federal government

Could you point to the exact place in this discussion where someone proposed to significantly raise the wages of federal employees?

[hrothgar]

 Rodney26, on 2010-December-16, 18:56, said:

Reading hrothgar's screed about "equality of opportunity" while simultaneously defending the salaries of your average federal employee due to their education level was interesting. Do more people that come from wealth or poverty get the opportunity for extensive education? Do you think that your average federal employee comes from wealth or poverty given that your average employee has more years of education?

Rodney, you need to understand that its possible to simultaneously

1. Make an observation about the way things are
2. Make a wish about the way things should be

More specifically, I see no contradiction between stating a fact:

"White collar federal employees are better educated than the median American"

And expressing an opinion:

"I think that its right and proper to tax the affluent and use the money to improve the public education system"

FWIW, I suspect that one of your basic claims is true: I believe that white collar Federal workers probably do come from a relatively priviledge social strata. However, I don't consider any of this relevent to the conversation at hand.

One point that you might want to consider is how federal dollar get spent.

Back during the Great Depression, the Federal Government directly employeed blue collar workers through programs like the TVA, the CCC, and the other "alphabet" agencies. As of late, the Federal government prefers to use Federal funds to hire private contractors to provide these same services.

One natural consequence of this is the following:

The blue collar jobs end up in private companies
Th Federal government hires white collar administrators to run the programs

This is another reason why naive comparisons between "the average pay" of Federal employees and private employees is inappropriate.
You're looking at biased samples.

One can argue whether or not this outsourcing is a good idea (personally, I would have preferred to see more direct Federal employment).
However, the impact on stratification should be fairly uncontroversial.

[luke warm]

 hrothgar, on 2010-December-17, 07:57, said:

One can argue whether or not this outsourcing is a good idea (personally, I would have preferred to see more direct Federal employment). However, the impact on stratification should be fairly introversial.

you're gonna love it when i'm dictator... you'll especially love the military, since there won't be many people in it... schools free, health care free, education system actually working, energy efficient homes/cars... clean(er) energy... the list goes on and on... 'course it's gonna cost you just a tad more than it does now, but nobody will bitch very much - or very often

[hrothgar]

 hrothgar, on 2010-December-17, 07:57, said:

oops

[hrothgar]

 luke warm, on 2010-December-17, 13:54, said:

you're gonna love it when i'm dictator... you'll especially love the military, since there won't be many people in it... schools free, health care free, education system actually working, energy efficient homes/cars... clean(er) energy... the list goes on and on... 'course it's gonna cost you just a tad more than it does now, but nobody will bitch very much - or very often

Nice responsive answer...

Let's move back a step: Do you agree that a system in which the Federal government outsources hiring will bias pay scales?

[luke warm]

 hrothgar, on 2010-December-17, 14:58, said:

Nice responsive answer...

Let's move back a step: Do you agree that a system in which the Federal government outsources hiring will bias pay scales?

whose pay scale? in general i'd answer yes i do agree with that... but that's just another thing you won't have to worry much about when i'm in charge... not saying i won't outsource, just that most jobs will be with the ufss (united federation of sovereign states, of which we'd be one of the founding members)

[PassedOut]

Larry David weighs in: Thanks for the Tax Cut

Quote

After years of coveting them, I’ll finally be able to afford blueberries. Did you know they have a lot of antioxidants, which prevent cancer? Cancer! This tax cut just might save my life. Who said Republicans don’t support health care?

Life is good.

[PassedOut]

Good news on the deficit-reduction front: Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

Quote

WASHINGTON — When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

This step not only assists folks to avoid the ghastly end-of-life medical assaults that few want, but it begins to address a huge source of wasteful expenditures built in to the US budget. At the same time the new policy permits those who fear death to choose in advance the more aggressive mechanical life support.

[PassedOut]

Laughing behind their hands, sleazy politicians fished for votes in the US congressional election by railing against earmarks. Many fell for the scam, so I hope that reporters continue to point out the hypocrisy: Lawmakers Fund Pet Projects Without Earmarks

Quote

Lettermarking, which takes place outside the Congressional appropriations process, is one of the many ways that legislators who support a ban on earmarks try to direct money back home.

In phonemarking, a lawmaker calls an agency to request financing for a project. More indirectly, members of Congress make use of what are known as soft earmarks, which involve making suggestions about where money should be directed, instead of explicitly instructing agencies to finance a project. Members also push for increases in financing of certain accounts in a federal agency’s budget and then forcefully request that the agency spend the money on the members’ pet project.

Because all these methods sidestep the regular legislative process, the number of times they are used and the money involved are even harder to track than with regular earmarks.

As intended.

[mike777]

You can never get rid of the agency problem.

In fact the system is built to have friction between how Congress, lifelong government bureaucrats and the executive branch want the money spent.

[PassedOut]

The free lunch crowd will be voting to repeal US health care reform this week. Because the repeal would certainly add large sums to the federal deficit, these people have been fighting a "war against arithmetic" to disguise their fiscal irresponsibility.

Paul Krugman discusses the latest expansion of their little war: The War on Logic

Quote

So, about that nonsense: this week the House is expected to pass H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act — its actual name. But Republicans have a small problem: they claim to care about budget deficits, yet the Congressional Budget Office says that repealing last year’s health reform would increase the deficit. So what, other than dismissing the nonpartisan budget office’s verdict as “their opinion” — as Mr. Boehner has — can the G.O.P. do?

The answer is contained in an analysis — or maybe that should be “analysis” — released by the speaker’s office, which purports to show that health care reform actually increases the deficit. Why? That’s where the war on logic comes in.

First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.” What’s that?

Well, in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. The formula was, however, flawed; it would lead to payments so low that doctors would stop accepting Medicare patients. Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes. And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform.

But the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform. So the G.O.P. argument here is exactly like claiming that my mortgage payments, which I’ll have to make no matter what we do tonight, are a cost of going out for dinner.

And so on.

Since 1980, the free lunch crowd has loudly been making the same types of claims: that arithmetic cannot believed. Until now, there have always been some republicans willing to say, "Hey, that makes no sense!"

Until now.