Friends sent me two links today:
- “20 government workers with super-sized pay” (my favorite is the prison dentist who earns $621,000 per year drawn from tax money extracted from Californians who have to drive to Tijuana to get dental care that they can afford)
- animated video with Fullerton, California fireman
Feel better about your job!
The various stories in the first link are outrageous, of course, but I have to say that the numbers don’t seem that large when compared to the salaries paid to corporate executives. For example, according to Wikipedia, when Mark Hurd left HP after it turned out he’d falsified expense reports to conceal an affair, he received a severance payment of $12 million cash; with stock and options, the total was about $34 million. If you added up all the money paid to the 20 workers in the link, I’m not sure you’d get to $34 million.
Generally speaking, the range of salaries paid in the public sector is much more compressed than in the private sector: people at the top receive much less pay in the public sector than in the private sector, but conversely, people at the bottom are better paid in the public sector than in the private sector.
Russil: You want us to compare our incomes to that of one of the world’s most successful corporate looters on the same day as we compare ourselves to public employee pension collectors? Who among us could survive such a day without committing suicide?
Thinking out loud here, and not that I support it, but here we go …
Could a government employ argue that this is capitalism at work? I.e.: why shouldn’t government employ (perhaps other then elected ones) not be allowed to rip the benefit of capitalism?
How comes I’m not suprised.
“Dem früheren HRE-Chef Axel Wieandt winkt eine üppige Altersvorsorge. Er hat ab seinem 60. Lebensjahr ein Anrecht auf eine jährliche Rente von 237.450 Euro. Seine Pensionsansprüche sind aus Sicht von Juristen wohl nicht anzufechten, obgleich der Staat die Bank vor der Pleite bewahrt hat.”
from http://bertjensen.info/hypo-real-estate-rentenanspruch-nach-18-monaten/
Rough translation of the main parts:
The HRE CEO will get a pension of 237450 EUR /year after retirement (with 60).
The bank was completly overtaken by the governement in 2009 and till today aroudn 140 Billion Euro have been sunk.
Yes it’s not important any longer to provide customers with things they desire. It’s more important to be good friend with anyone in the “bueraucrats land of plenty”
Do I feel this is disgusting….
Well you can bet….