[turtle777]

WTF ? Big government at its finest.



Federal Workers Making Over $180,000 Increase By 2,000% In Past Five Years | zero hedge



Further Observations On The Parabolic Blow Off In Federal Compensation | zero hedge

I shall consider it my patriotic duty to cheat on my taxes wherever possible.

This is f*cking ridiculous

Edit: added pics

-t

[Atheist]

I blame Bush!

[SpaceMonkey]

USA Today's table is misleading. The pay gap is more like 12% once you adjust for education and experience, according to two scholars at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Jason Richwine and Andrew G. Biggs: Federal employees are not underpaid 22 percent | Washington Examiner

(Disclosure: I am not an employee of the federal government, in case you are wondering)

[turtle777]

I really don't want to disucss the pay gap, since everyone is always finding ways to explain it away.
(My personal opinion: they are WAY overpaid.)

But the gap in PAY RAISES is inexcusable.

-t

[SpaceMonkey]

I guess I'd be interested in seeing data over a longer period of time. It's easy to imagine that the disparity in average salary change (6.6% versus 3.9% according to the USA Today table) would skew in the opposite direction during times of economic growth.

Edit: The part of the table I think you are referring to is really about growth in average salaries, not growth in raises awarded, so it all comes down to the pay gap anyway.

[ghporter]

The federal government has also moved a lot of jobs from the regular payroll into contractor jobs-either via individual contracts or through hiring an agency to provide specific services. The numbers, whether they're as extreme as in turtle's links or the more likely 12-ish % SpaceMonkey suggests reflect an increase in senior management, with senior management compensation levels. We have more agencies than in 2000, and other agencies are much larger than they were before 2000. Please note that while Congress apparently blithely awards the funding to pay for all of these new positions and really high compensation packages, they are ready to SLASH funding for veterans and military dependent medical care, and make retired veterans pay a whole lot more for their health care than they already do-note that most of us signed up with a verbal promise of "lifetime free healthcare for you and your spouse." That hasn't worked out so well for us...

Good managers and executives should be paid in keeping with their experience, education, and ability. But we have tons of managers that are in charge of managing other managers-too much middle management without enough GOOD management at the top. And government agencies are still all having to "do more with less" no matter what their missions.

Good call, turtle. Except the "cheat on taxes" bit-they'll just make up for not getting all of your (and other people's) taxes by shorting vets, deserving medicare recipients, and other good causes.

[Doofy]

Fed adding jobs this year at 10,000 month?

Looks like Barry's following through on his Blair clone thing. That's exactly what Blair did, because more public sector workers dependant on the jobs means more people voting for big government.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Please note that while Congress apparently blithely awards the funding to pay for all of these new positions and really high compensation packages, they are ready to SLASH funding for veterans and military dependent medical care, and make retired veterans pay a whole lot more for their health care than they already do-note that most of us signed up with a verbal promise of "lifetime free healthcare for you and your spouse." That hasn't worked out so well for us...

Yep, that's 100% f*cked up.

I might not support all NEW spending of the military, but those promises made in the past have to be kept. Period.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Except the "cheat on taxes" bit-they'll just make up for not getting all of your (and other people's) taxes by shorting vets, deserving medicare recipients, and other good causes.

Yes, that's a problem. But I'd rather cheat on my taxes and then help my family members in the military than handing more money to a wasteful beast.

Seriously, at what point of taxation of the ordinary middle class will people say enough is enough ?
40% ? 50% 75% ?

-t

[ghporter]

One problem with the current tax structure is that it's horrendously complex. There are so many rules, conditions and stipulations involved that nobody knows exactly what's supposed to be counted, taxed or exempted for everyone; tax attorneys specialize in particular types of income, such as individuals, small businesses, etc.

Another problem is that Congress has put specific values in a lot of tax law, rather than having everything linked to the value of the dollar in one way or another, so some tax thresholds are stupidly low. And the Alternative Minimum Tax structure, originally added to keep really wealthy people from skipping out on taxes completely, is probably the worst "specific value" offender of the bunch. A lower-middle-class family of 4 can wind up with a real tax rate of over 33% simply because the AMT kicks in on them. Way to be forward thinking, Congress. The AMT must GO. Today's wealthy are actually paying pretty thoroughly, with real values of taxes paid and effective rates much higher than the basic rates for people with "realistic" incomes like you and me.