So I was checking Facebook this morning and found this piece (OS) from FoxNews.com sitting in my feed: Government employees -- the true 1 percent. Normally I ignore anything from the dimwits at Fox but something about the headline pushed my outrage button. This is clearly the new meme Fox is pushing against the occupy movement, "Its not the banks, its the government worker." It appears the author, Wayne Allyn Root, was a former Libertarian VP candidate now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. Well, needless to say, the article was poorly conceived, poorly researched, and constructed to manipulated the ignorant, not enlighten. I posted a comment responding to the column but the moderators at Fox weren't going to have their little meme ravaged on their own website so, of course, they didn't post my response. As a public service, I have posted it here for fun and entertainment. Enjoy below the fold.
This piece is more of the typical distract and divide strategy that Fox News employes to keep its audience ignorant and compliant! The post makes essentially 3 implicit claims: 1. That our budget deficit is almost exclusively due to government employee compensation 2. That public sector employees are all overpaid leeches sucking life from the body politic 3. That private sector employees are somehow unfairly subsidizing their public sector counterparts.
Lets look at the veracity of the first claim...are government employees bankrupting the country? Um no...as it stands now the deficit is about $15 trillion and is expected to reach $20 trillion by the end of the decade. I can only assume that Mr. Root pulled the $115 trillion figure directly out of his ass to frighten his readers. So lets analyze some of the #s shall we? Recall that the government was running a half trillion $ budget surplus at the end of the Clinton administration. What happened? Well, we didn't suddenly hire 20 million government employes for $5.75 million each as Fox News would have you believe. So where did the money go? $3.7 Trillion went to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. 2.8 Trillion went to the Bush Tax Cuts. $500 billion went to the unfunded Medicare Part D giveaway to big Pharma. Approximately 1/3 of the deficit can be accounted for in loss of federal revenue & stretched social services due to recession (Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits). That doesn't even include the Wall Street, TARP and AIG bailouts, Federal Reserve emergency loans, and 3 rounds of QE from the Fed. And don't forget the stimulus boggy man. That accounts for the majority of the federal deficit, so what about the so called unfunded liabilities? If you want to see a real scary #, last year Bank of America transferred Merrill Lynch's entire derivatives portfolio to BofA's side of the ledger so that that portfolio would be insured under FDIC. That amounts to a brand new $73 trillion taxpayer liability. By comparison total US GDP is approximately $15 trillion. If that portfolio of unregulated derivatives tanks (which it likely could) the US taxpayer is on the hook for almost five times what the entire national economy produces in a year! That's just one company. Who is the real 1% again? Must be easier to blame government employees for our problems because the facts about what Wall Street banks have done to this country are so mind blowing that most people just don't want to know.
So what about the 2nd claim? First, the # of public employees sited account for all employees across every level of government: federal, state, and municipal. The vast majority of these workers are employed at the local level, approximately 13.2 million (Government Employment & Payroll). How these employees have anything to do with the federal budget deficit, Mr. Root doesn't explain. He just allows the reader to infer that these employees are all somehow a drain in the federal budget. Fact of the matter is that the local and state budgets are independent of the federal budget and are not constitutionally allowed, in most cases, to run budget deficits. So what about the teachers and fire fighters in Clark County? Lets just say the revenue base in Vegas is a bit different than other locations for obvious reasons. The math, however, from Mr. Root just doesn't make sense. When you take the average compensation for an employee in an organization with its leadership compensation included than it appears inflated. I'm sure the average fire fighter in Clark is not earning $200K, not hardly. Neither is the average teacher an overpaid fat cat. Looking at the executive packages of the teacher's union is another case of isolating figures for effect. Compare the average CEO salary for a private corp in the US vs. the average employee salary. You're looking at a 331:1 ratio. Is that not a bit more outrageous than a 12:1 ratio for a teacher's union with a similar organizational complexity. I'm not saying that these union heads should be paid that much but...a little perspective, please. Hell, the CEO of the United Way of the Carolinas makes nearly 7 figures...and that's a non profit. The great right wing myth of the overpaid public sector employee is 100% pure Colombian hyperbole!
Do private sector employees subsidize their public counterparts? No again. First, while the average federal employee earns more than the average private employee that has to do with the fact that the average civil servant is far more educated and performing higher level tasks than the average private sector employee (Public-sector workers earn less). If you look apples to apples at equivalent level positions, private employees tend to receive far greater compensation than their public counterparts. At a state level the difference is even more striking (Debunking the Myth of the Overcompensated Public Employee). In addition to the straight numbers...public sector employees pay taxes at the same rate of their private sector counterparts. Who it truly subsidized in society. How about corporations that pay zero in taxes? How about the wealthy that pay a measly 15% or less on their carried interest? Our taxes pay for the roads they ship their products on, the soldiers and police that secure their persons and property form invasion and theft, our education system that provides an educated workforce. Whoever says that the federal employee is a parasite on society does not understand the relationship between a parasite and its host. The real 1% then, are the wealthy and their corporate entities. They extract wealth from the economy, rig the legal system, buy our politicians, and pay almost nothing in taxes in proportion to their wealth. They are the parasites...not government employees!
Now that I have clearly spent more time researching & writing a response than the author spent writing this screed, can I please have some of that sweet sweet private sector $$$. I think I deserve it.