Q: When does a servant make more than his master?
A: When he’s a civil servant.
As of June 2009, 155 million people were laboring in the shrinking private sector of the American Empire with a per capita income of $39,751 and a per household income of $50,740.
In addition to supporting themselves and their dependents on those earnings, they were also supporting 22.5 million government employees at the federal, state and local levels. The average pay of those on the federal government payroll is $75,419 this year, according to Econwatch.
Why is the average unproductive civil servant making nearly double the average productive worker in the private sector?
Of course this isn’t counting the:
- 3.9 million welfare recipients
- 46.5 million Social Security recipients, a number projected to rise to about 72 million in the next 20 years.
- 14.7 million Americans drawing unemployment benefits, with that number expected to rise consistently in the foreseeable future.
The productive sector workers are also paying for everything the Leviathan State does, such as wars, roads,Imperial adventures, private stadiums, bailouts, counterfeiting, ad infinitum. They also pick up the soaring tabs for 47 million Medicaid and 42 million Medicare recipients.
Sooner or later, we’re going to shrug.
Thanks Jim Panyard
#1 by joeatwsj on June 11, 2010 - 2:49 pm
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if I buy an annuity, when it comes time to collect, would you think that I am sucking on the private sector tit? If not, then why, after a lifetime of paying in, you would characterise social security recipients as such?
Boggles the mind…
#2 by robparis on June 11, 2010 - 3:14 pm
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When you buy an annuity, you receive a predetermined amount of money at a predetermined time based on the initial capital and interest rate. Social Security lifetime payments however, are not dependent on contributions, but on how long you live.
Also, I’m not condemning the people on Social Security, but the program itself.
#3 by joeatwsj on June 11, 2010 - 6:35 pm
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Only some annuities are paid out for a predetermined time. They can also be based on how long you live, very much like social security. Also, the amount of your social security payment is based on how much you (and your employer if you have had one) paid in to the system. It is very much an insurance program, funded by those who benefit. The problem is that gov’t didn’t take your contributions and investment to fund your retirement, instead they spent them. For all those years when current income was less than current outlays the gov’t called it a surplus and added it to the general budget, now that outlays are expected to exceed income (a problem we’ve known about for a generation) the program has been rebranded as an entitlement and a gov’t give away.
#4 by Rob Paris on June 11, 2010 - 6:55 pm
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Joe – That’s true, there are plenty of companies offering lifetime annuities. But what happens when the company estimates wrong? It goes out of business. What happens when the government estimates wrong? It raises taxes. A little moral hazard there.
The SS payment is somewhat based on how much you put in, but not entirely. Look at Ida May Fuller. $24.75 in, $22,888.92 out. Also consider the impact on Social Security survivors insurance for those who are married compared to those who aren’t.
I’m not going to disagree with you about the government spending the money. You’re totally right. And that’s why their current liabilities aren’t on the book. $100 trillion is a lot of money… before hyperinflation that is.