- Wow. Somebody thinks federal employees aren’t paid enough when compared with people in “similar private-sector jobs.” The article never explains what private-sector jobs are similar to … oh, career money confiscator, thug who tells businesspeople how to run their businesses, or professional killer of nursing mothers.
- Integrity. Doctors Without Borders refuses Pentagon money to rebuild Pentagon-bombed hospital.
- There is a war on Christians. It’s being conducted in the Middle East and to a lesser extent in the regulations of western governments. Not at or by Starbucks.
- F*c*b**k: Now testing a new form of creepy.
- Yes, it appears (certain) black people are subjected to a double standard. When they run for president, that is.
- LOL. Wonder how many of the “hottest” firearms of 2015 will eventually end up on the back-to-the-drawing-board list? (Surely the noble Liberator pistol does not belong in the disgraced company.)
- Obamacare dominoes keep falling. Failure of the co-ops pushes rates up for everyone.
- Oh, Hillary, Hillary, aren’t you just the hoity-toity little miss? Making a state official go through a wanding just to get into his own office.
Huh. I remember when ‘public sector’ employees supposedly accepted lower wages because they were all patriotic and public-minded and stuff. Didn’t have anything to do with the lower standards and lack of employment competition at all. Now they’re unionized and spend taxpayer-paid time whining about how they should get more because they’re all patriotic and public-minded and stuff. Also they’ve got most of the guns, so…
Speaking of guns, I saw that ‘worst guns’ listicle some while back and resolved anew not to go to the Washington Times for my gun information.
Some of that comparison of federal to private sector employees is going to depend heavily on region and specific job category. I am a federal employee (yes, you may burn me in effigee) and there are comparable private sector employees for my job. They are contractors to the federal government and generally they make 20-30% more in pay than I do for similar work but often less actual qualifications/experience. They are generally not held to as high a standard of accountability as comparable federal employees. My career field is also prohibited from unionizing.
So what are the average salries for muggers, hitmen, and HOA busybodies?
FB: Every time I login, they try to get me to give them my phone number. Like hell.Fortunately, I don’t have a smart phone that would run their malware anyway. OTOH, imagine a playground stalking pedophile being outed. Or…
Get a prepaid smartphone and disposable email addy, and set up a dedicated FB account. Take pictures of cops and other govgoons. Nuke a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show.
2016 Freak Show: I’m very much enjoying the spectacle of the lamestream muddia smearing a candidate by claiming he did not stab or hammer-bludgeon anyone. Then there’s the ‘conservatives’ otraged by Kelo cheering for Trump.
I remember when the Star FireStar series was the hottest thing going. I think I’m one of maybe 200 people who actually bought one. (In my defense, I hadn’t realy considered buying one until I casually picked up at at gun show and it just fit.)
HRC: Depending on the current Masshole concentration, she may have just guaranteed a Sanders win in NH; they tend not to like crap like that.
Maybe it just seems more acute up here, but the biggest problem I see with teat salaries vs. legitimate salaries is not so much that the latter are larger than the former (they certainly are), but rather that some days it seems like it’s only BigBro that’s even offering*. And “some days” is a lot closer to “most days” than not.
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* Full disclosure: I’ve been out of work for almost exactly a year now, trying to find something legitimate without going all cockapoo. It’s a frustrating enterprise, even if I do continue to learn as I go.
Hey Bear, I’m one of those 200 weirdos as well. I even went to the trouble to slim mine down a bit and improve the ergonomics, and shot it so much the firing pin finally sheared in two.
(As to that, anyone have any advice as to where to go for a replacement? Thus far Numrich has not been terribly helpful.)
In the end, although I reach elsewhere these days for my own purposes, I still think it has value for those with small hands. Of course, nobody with decision-making power seems to ask me about these things. Not tacticaler-operatorer enough, I guess. 🙂
Like that somewhat here in Wyoming too. We have always had a seriously insane number of government “employees” for a long time, but now with the “bust” going on in the economy, all the way from cattle to coal, there are only two kinds of jobs available generally: minimum wage service stuff and some form of government or government contractor positions. The latter are certainly not reduced any. For example, there are fewer children now, with families moving away, so the logical thing would be to reduce the number of teachers. OH no… not going to happen. So our property taxes will continue to rise as our numbers decrease.
And small businesses continue to close here too. We just lost the best mechanic ever. He pulled out and headed for Texas last week. I don’t know who will take care of my car now… There’s a building on Main street that has been empty for more than five years. Just saw another one empty last week. We can’t even keep a barber in this town. 🙁
I suspect the wages or earnings are only a small part of the picture. The taxes and regulations, even just the local ones, make for a hostile work environment – for both business and employees.
Kevin, ‘fraid not. Parts seem to be virtually impossible to find. Although I did notice that Triple K has magazines now. $35 apiece! Darned glad I had the foresight to buy a handful of mags when I got the pistol.
Twenty-something years of shooting and mine’s still running fine. No idea how many rounds I’ve put through it.
Next pistol I’m bloody well gonna pick something common. [grin]
Matt — Not going to burn you in effigy (at least not until a whole bunch of bigger govocrats have gotten the treatment). 🙂
OTOH, I’ve been a contractor nearly all my career (only once and briefly to gov) and it’s been my experience that contractors get more (per hour or per contract) because they have to cover their own vacations, health insurance, retirement, etc. and because they have no career path on the job. So contractor pay and employee pay is never, on the surface, comparable.
Maybe it’s different in the govworld. But are you really comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges?
[Yet the media have paid far more attention to Ben Carson’s speculation about what the Pyramids were built for, thousands of years ago, than to outright lies that Hillary Clinton told about tragic American deaths in Benghazi, within days after she knew the truth, as her own e-mails now reveal.]
[Meanwhile he cut back on our own military defense so drastically that even former Secretaries of Defense who had served during his administration have publicly criticized his policies.]
I’m shocked, shocked, that we cannot trust the media. Even (presumably) when it goes on and on about WMDs. And sorry, I cannot bring myself to care about some ruling class puke getting toasted in Benghazi.
As to salaries and jobs, the government AKA “The Blob” will not be content until it absorbs everything, and the only work out there is government work. Of course if you measure output, it makes sense government employees get paid less (if that is even so), because they don’t do anything but warm chairs – when they aren’t out there shooting 6 year old kids.
Heh. Come to think of it… As a USAF Staff Segeant, I worked as a radio tech at a mountaintop site in Greece. A few years later, the Air Farce converted that very site to civilian operation and I went back as a contractor to do exactly the same job. At somewhere around three times the pay.
But then, they couldn’t simply order me to go back there, so they needed the pay as incentive. As for qualifications… that’s another story. Let’s say I was the most qualified, and one of two people who had even been in that field before.
The linked article on F*c*b**k’s plan to automatically scan all the pictures in your camera roll seriously understates the privacy implications.
Smartphones don’t have enough CPU horsepower (yet) to do reliable facial recognition. All or part of photos tagged as possibly having faces will be uploaded to F*c*b**k data centers where F*c*b**k servers will scan them, analyze them, and compare them to as many other photos in F*c*b**k/s massive databases as they like.
Any bets on when some young person’s sexting photos gets posted to mom’s wall?
How long before F*c*b**k gets a warrant or national security letter demanding instant notification and copies of photos whenever an image of a certain person or persons is scanned? How long before there is a false match?
The Onion’s 2011 article is still the best summary. CIA’s ‘Facebook’ Program Dramatically Cut Agency’s Costs
My thoughts:
Fedgov pay was increased within my lifetime because salaries were low compared to private sector already. BUT, I think they should be lower – none of us working in the private sector have the the kind of stability or protections for our jobs that ‘civil service’ provides. If I’d had that 40 years ago, I’d have been retired by now. We also have smaller pensions, which the courts keep giving back to employers anyway but fedgov’s pensions are never cut. So the whiners should just shut up.
I think the folks fussing about Starbucks’ cup design need to get a life. The one they have is obviously too easy already. On a scale of 1 – 10, it’s a 0.something.
FB’s Photo Magic is a pretty slick way to get all those FB dummies to participate in a proof of concept run of facial recognition software – and also to populate an entire database at the NSA. They’ll never be able to go anywhere again without being known because as we all know, FB WILL sell all the technology and data they get. Pretty soon they’ll hear ‘Hello Mary Ann’ when they walk into a department store or grocery.
I want most of those 13 guns. Thanks for finding those Claire.
The sooner Obamacare tanks entirely and gets repealed, the better off we will all be. I can’t wait.
Hillary – Pride comes before the fall. Your chutzpah will take you down faster than Trump can. It’s doing it already. You should go home, announce your retirement, spend a few months completing your self and what you COULD have been had you had less ego, and then dedicate your life to serving meals in a soup kitchen and trying to be a good grandmom to Chelsea’s kid.
Govt school teacher salary: $53k
Private school teacher salary: $39k
Numbers from back in 2007.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_075.asp
Re the Photo Magic issue: In addition to what people here have already said (with which I concur), I think there’s a broader concern. I’m not on FB, and have never been. But so many people are, including members of my family, that my photo will inevitably get posted there and “tagged” (I think that’s the correct term!) with my name by some well-meaning niece or nephew posting a family Christmas picture. And then I will be permanently enshrined in the FB’s (and the NSA’s) facial recognition archive. Thanks a lot, FB.
Claire,
The contractors I work with are defense contractors, employees of major corporations that are rented to the govt. Independent contractors are very rare in our line. So, the comparison is probably more like apples to pears than apples to oranges. The govt reimburses the contract company a set rate for each body provided and that employee is able to negotiate salary with the hiring company. the govt has no direct control (officially) over the contract employee.
Thanks for the explanation, Matt.
Hi Claire, I thought of you when I saw this http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053085/muji-unveils-a-trio-of-tiny-prefab-houses-cue-envy#1
Oh, jc2k, I love those! Especially the Japanese one with the floor-to-ceiling glass. Really like that they’re prefab, too. Oh, wouldn’t one of those make a good studio or workshop …