(Detail of ‘the slave market’ by Dali)

Everybody Needs to Take a Pay Cut

I can’t believe the crap that I see every day.

Just this morning I read an article in the news about a referendum in Wisconsin to severely limit public employees unions in the state.  It seems very aggressively targeted towards public unions (not including police, firefighters and the State Patrol) and there are active protests at the state capitol, where someone quipped that ‘it seemed that Cairo moved to Madison, Wisconsin”.

This is one of those situations where you stand back and wonder how the hell everybody can be so damned wrong.

Yes, public employees have always had better perks than the regular employees, so much so that now these public employees feel themselves to be entitled to those perks.  Those perks were ill conceived in the first place, bargained when the economy was sky high and the government banking a surplus. 

Congress is at the top of the list of those that ‘serve the people’ that have benefits way above what average Americans can possible afford. 

We watch as teachers get the best job anywhere and constantly listen to them whine because they have to do what teachers are supposed to do.  They make $50-75k a year with almost four months off and they are always bitching.  Enough already!  If you don’t like teaching, do something else!

Cops are the same.  They ride around arrogantly for weeks without having to do any actual work, and bitch whenever anything happens that they are “under the gun”.  They shoot to kill.  They bully citizens. Their union is very powerful and tries to hold the city hostage every time there is a fiscal crisis.

Trash collectors, street sweepers, dog catchers, parking ticket pseudo-cops, for crying out loud, even the people that vacuum the offices at night in public buildings have better insurance and benefits than the people that work for non-government businesses.

I am not trying to single these groups out, but when the public gets paid half on average of what the public employees get paid there is something wrong.

We, the people think that that is a problem.

On the other hand, government should not illegally target those unions to try to “fix” our economic woes.  I’m sure there is a lot of fat that can be trimmed a little closer to home. 

Let’s tell government that they don’t need all of those secretaries.  Secretaries of secretaries of secretaries. 

Let public employees, from the Governor down, pay for their own insurance and limit themselves to the same kind of vacations and perks that we the people are supposed to live with.

We should remind them that they are Public Servants. 

Union bosses, CEOs of companies and their retinues, and Presidents of corporations are all still collecting the same pay as if we were in good times.  The local car repair shop still charges $40 an hour for labor.  Concerts are priced out in the stratosphere.  Only the well to do can afford to go to a sporting event. And the list goes on.

Get a grip people, these are salad days, we can’t ‘let them eat cake.”

They is us.

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http://www.triond.com/users/LewSethics

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(Self portrait pf Rembrandt)

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(5000 fingers pic ourtesy wikipedia)

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