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February 8, 2010
Bureaucrats Live Large as Collapse Impends
Posted by Van Helsing at February 8, 2010 1:01 PM
Here's another indication as to just where all the money is going as our liberal kakistocracy spends us into inevitable economic collapse:
The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.
Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs [and that was back in early December] in the private sector.
That was back in December. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll employment has now fallen by 8.4 million since the economic crisis Obama has been milking began.
Not outraged yet? Try this:
When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules. …
The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.
It won't stop until we stop it — or until the entire house of cards collapses like Zimbabwe.
Mark Stein comments on our rulers' unsustainable spending:
Testifying to the House Budget Committee, Director Elmendorf attempted to pull back from the wilder shores of "unsustainable": "I think most observers expect that the government will act, that the unsustainability will be resolved through action, not through witnessing some collapse down the road," he said. "If literally nothing is done, then eventually something very, very bad happens. But I think the widespread view is that you and your colleagues will take action."
Dream on, you kinky fantasist. The one thing that can be guaranteed is that a political class led by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, a handful of reach-across-the-aisle Republican accommodationists, and an economically illiterate narcissist in the Oval Office is never going to rein in unsustainable spending in any meaningful sense. That leaves Director Elmendorf's alternative scenario. What was it again? Oh, yeah: "Some collapse down the road." …
It's not the "debt" or the "deficit," it's the spending. And the only way to reduce that is with fewer government agencies, fewer government programs, fewer government employees, lower government salaries.
Instead, all four are rocketing up: We are incentivizing unsustainability, and, when it comes to "some collapse down the road," you'll be surprised how short that road is.
If we don't get the keys to the liquor cabinet away from our drunken kakistocracy, it will literally destroy America within the next decade.
On tips from Edward and Lyle. Hat tip: Death by 1000 Paper Cuts.
