I wonder what he would have called someone who managed to avoid taxes but still benefited from the police and roads. A looter maybe?

Hmmm, that is interesting. Firefighters, policemen, and teachers are government workers in a sense, though some people think of paper pushers when they hear about government workers. Some would say the high pay is due to the danger in the first two jobs, and the fact that a Masters is required for the second.

I wonder if someone could compare jobs of equal danger and complexity category by category.

I suspect you don’t have volunteer firefighters bringing down the average either.

Anyway, I keep seeing these anecdotal complaints about evil public sector unions, but have yet to see actual numbers back up the theorizing and sloganeering

Perhaps that is because you don’t know how to use google. I did a search on “public sector versus private sector compensation” and found the following:

State and local government workers now earn an average of $39.50 per hour in total compensation, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Private workers earn an average of $26.09 an hour. Benefits are a big reason for the gap.

There are dozens of similar articles that pop up. People who defend public unions like to focus on the wages paid to their workers but the wages are just the cash that worker themselves takes home. From the perspective of the tax payers on the hook for public employees, however, it is compensation i.e. the total cost of a worker that counts. In terms of compensation, not salary, public workers are disproportionately expense. The impose a premium.

State workers have better compensation in states with public workers unions because the unions can extort high compensation from people by strikes and by using compulsory dues to help out friendly politicians.

Starvation is the proper course of action.

I suggest systematic steps to eliminate the revenue from the government by avoiding taxable actions. I’d love to get feedback and suggestions.

1. Purchase only tax-free investments, and defer any long terms gains into the distant future. (this avoids the tax on capital)

2. Purchase only used goods, directly from individuals. (this avoids the corporate tax)

3. Purchase land for agricultural use. (farming is sacrosanct and tax pften advantaged).

4. Barter wherever possible. It’s not crazy, there are web sites which make it easier to find people willing to trade goods/services.

Does anyone have other suggestions?

The typical state worker is not allowed to work overtime, and managers who do so are not compensated for it. The 9/8/80 schedule is a flex-schedule that involves 80 hours of work over the course of two weeks (8x nine-hour and 1x eight-hour days over the course of two weeks). It requires management approval and is nothing like the highly flexible telework schedules that are common with private sector firms in the high-tech and consulting fields.

While the State’s vacation schedule and health benefits are currently better than most private sector firms, they don’t compensate for the fact that private sector hourly earnings have outpaced state salaries by 25% over the past two decades. State employees also don’t receive the year end bonuses, profit sharing, stock options, 401k matching funds, etc. that many private sector employees do.

I’m not sure what you mean about free vehicles and car allowances (unless you’re talking about CHP patrol vehicles?), but very few state employees receive such things, and they’re nothing like the car allowances ($500/month+) that many sales, insurance, and other private sector employees have.

Notice that your data also seeks to obsfucate the massive expansion in government by couching it as a per capita increase. Had government hires remained proportional to population growth then there would be no per capita increase.

I’m not trying to obfuscate anything by using per capita figures to account for the fact that California’s population increased by roughly 9 million people over the time period in question. -Not- using per capita figures when examining the growth of state employees would be an example of obfuscation.

Anyway, I keep seeing these anecdotal complaints about evil public sector unions, but have yet to see actual numbers back up the theorizing and sloganeering.

During discovery we discovered BTW that millions of dollars were sent to the AFL CIO, among others, the first year of the fair share law. It’s laundered and laundered and eventually helps elect Dems. That’s why CA pols support the unions; they would be voted out if employees had a say.

The feds’ refusal to protect the nation’s borders has created a huge poor class that the state cannot afford to take care of, changing the state’s demographics and political capital along with it.

This effect along with the others you list effects other states because they are actions of the Federal government. Federal stupidity is a rain that falls on all states alike. In regard to illegal immigration Texas is California’s twin. Clearly, California’s made different decisions from other states that landed it in its current predicament.

California’s main problem, like many states, is that it’s Constitutional right to determine its own future has been trampled by the federal government. The feds’ refusal to protect the nation’s borders has created a huge poor class that the state cannot afford to take care of, changing the state’s demographics and political capital along with it. The constant manipulation of the money supply and illegal federal legislation has created one devastating bubble after another. The Telecom Deregulation Act of 1996 created the .com bubble and the Fed’s lowering of the interest rate as the bubble popped, along with other federal housing legislation, created the phony housing bubble. Unlike the feds, California doesn’t have a printing press to generate the money to try to recover from the disasters imposed on it.

It is at the point now, that the state has no choice but to petition for href=”http://ewebsmith.com/gov/redress.html”>redress on behalf of its people.

And lo and behold at the same time it seems the services we used to be able to afford we no longer can.

devaluating stocks like in 2001 and plumeting financial instruments in the current day? us dollars?

http://theartofpeace.blogspot.com/2009/01/if-statistic-sounds-like-it-cant-be.html

Notice that your source does not include the total outlays, nor total increas in outlays for State employees during those periods.

Notice that your data also seeks to obsfucate the massive expansion in government by couching it as a per capita increase. Had government hires remained proportional to population growth then there would be no per capita increase.

Not feel good fantasies, just the truth. California government is an ever growing leviathan.

But even in your case, if you are indeed underpaid in your salary, you must add the value of your overtime, your comp. time, the “9/80″ program (I wouldn’t mind 26 extra paid holidays a year, which is what this travesty amounts to), the 10+ additional paid holidays, the extremely generous vacation and sick time granted, the better than average health care benefits, the free vehicles and car allowances and low interest home loans, and, of course, the totally unsustainable early retirement and pension. When you normalize for all of that, what you are really making is far, far more on average than what the rest of us taxpayers get in the private sector.

Then of course you have to add the pernicious conflict of interests where unions, just like governments, have a quite natural urge to increase the number of jobs they control. For this reason, social problems caused by, for example, an immigration policy that prefers uneducated and unskilled workers, mean more taxes and problems for ordinary citizens, but they are a meal ticket for the government and the unions who control the government. Unions not only have caused salary and benefit packages to get way out of line for government workers, they naturally support policies that multiply social problems and create more need for more government.

Thank you Shannon for an excellent commentary. You are absolutely right. Hopefully if the state and local governments can go totally broke, unions in the public sector will finally be subject to reasonable regulations and checks on their power.

The primary problem with state employees is not their salaries but rather the expensive programs that employe them. The union creates spending to create jobs. The state might spend $500,000 on a program but pay someone $50,000 to administer it. So, you can say that the workers are not paid unreasonably but that doesn’t mean that the union isn’t seriously distorting state spending.

There are other tax consumers, companies that depend on government contracts, people dependent on government aid, businesses that rely on government suppression of competition but the public employee unions are easily the largest organized group. Their impact on the states politics has been significant and growing.

While the number of state employees per capita in California increased by 4.6% between FY 90/91 and 07/08 (source), it doesn’t mitigate the fact that salary increases for state employees trailed CPI by 15%+ during that period; a period in which private sector hourly wages outpaced CPI by roughly 15% (source).

Compared to other states, California has the 3rd lowest number of state employees per capita. Total state and local government employees per capita is nearly 10% below the national average (source).

While I’m no fan of government employee unions, blaming them for California’s current problems has more to do with feel-good political fantasies than empirical evidence.

From your friends for a literate internet.

But there is something that can be done about it and that is to leave the country, take your money with, get a new passport and never come back. That is, if you have the financial means to do so which is for a lot more Americans than many might think because many foreign countries are much cheaper.

Forget about changing the “system” because regardless of how much people complain about it, the majority is in favor of it though they claim they are not.

There are a few who actually believe in a free lunch at no one’s expense (hence all these absurd government guarantees in both the recent financial crisis and before it through agencies sich as the FDIC) and the majority are envy filled populist damagogues who believe in a free lunch at someone else’s expense. They claim not to be but when they are asked about government programs such as Social Security, government health care, education and everything else, most of them support more spending or at least the current level of spending by a lopsided margin. Those who claim to be against the “system” are either clueless or liars and hypocrites. They are mostly disappointed because those whom they favor- “the people” – always get the shaft by those who are wealthy an influential. The only thing that should be surprising in this outcome is that these idealistic incurable romantic fools are surprised. There is no other outcome possible.

A prior post made a comment about the absurd US taxation laws. Yes, you may have to pay taxes legally for 10 years, but in many cases some would still be better off doing it anyway.

PS. You might be surprised at the number of my colleagues who might agree with you too!