Public Workers Make 43.4% More Than EVERYONE ELSE: More reasons to vote YES on ISSUE 2

 

 

Let me guess. The pro union faction will declare the new report that Andrew Biggs from the American Enterprise Institute just released is false, which states clearly that public sector workers are being paid 43.4% more than private sector positions, and that many of the costs are the type of secondary costs that many in the private sector don’t even consider because they are only known in public sector service. The unions instead will declare that all the information contained in that report is somehow misleading and concocted by the “evil John Kasich” from his throne of power. (This shows what a poor grasp on reality those people function from)

That’s why I’m putting up the original video of Andrew Biggs where he explains how he arrived at the information and discusses how other information that had been floating around prior to this report is fundamentally wrong due to several errors of judgment, which this report corrected.

The public union supporters have been floating around for weeks, just as they do with school levies the fear that if Issue 2 stays law, then the public workers will stop their public service work and will leave those jobs to work in the private sector……………LOL. Let me make a prediction. (WHISPER) NO THEY WON’T, because as Mr. Biggs said, “Fears that public employees are being treated unfairly, or that many will quit their jobs and the government will be unable to recruit replacements, are almost certainly unfounded.”

Public workers even if they gave back half of all their benefits to the taxpayers in order to be more equal would STILL be out ahead of everyone who pays their salary. That is where all the hidden costs of state budgets are. They get lost in the chaos of big government and explain why those employees are so expensive. The more government workers there are, the less efficient they are, because personal accountability is decreased. That is the subject of this Doc Thompson discussion on 700 WLW in a recent broadcast where he reveals how inaccurate states have been in issuing unemployment insurance. Doc continues on to discuss the new AEI report after this stunning revelation. The terrible performance discussed in this broadcast could be translated to virtually any form of government. This is the problem with politicians who “create” jobs just for the sake of filling seats with bodies without any concept on performance.

For your own reference, feel free to read the whole report for yourself. You can read it at the link below:

http://issuu.com/communitypress/docs/brtcompensation/2

The basics of the report are this:

• Ohio public employees receive nearly the same wages as comparable private workers (2.5 percent less, although that’s an average disguising some of the education professions with lower level administrative work, such as those who issue the insurance payments. Teachers along with police and firefighters are very guilty of uncontrolled overtime payments, and double-dipping retirements which are paying the same employee twice and driving up the cost of staffing those positions.)

• Fringe benefits for Ohio public workers are more than twice as generous as those paid in the private‐sector, meaning that when pay and benefits are taken into consideration public workers receive 31.2 percent more in total compensation than private‐sector counterparts.

• Ohio Public employees enjoy significantly greater job security than private‐sector workers. That job security has an economic value equal to approximately 10 percent of compensation.

• Even if the provisions of SB 5 were implemented in full, it is very likely that Ohio public‐sector workers would continue to enjoy a substantial compensation premium over private‐sector Ohioans.

Seeing all this it’s not hard to see why the public employee unions are out chanting, screaming, and acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. They know they have a good thing going. The bigger government is, the less anyone pays attention to how much things cost and this is the direct reason that taxes are increased, because nobody is managing the costs. So when the union lobby says that Issue 2 will not directly save money, that is because they are not considering all the indirect costs, which make up a majority of the 43.4% disparity, and if each city and district can control their own costs, it will be much harder to hide these huge differences in compensation that are currently hidden in a massive bureaucracy.

For the public unions it is easier to make a villain out of Governor Kasich, as though Kasich is the one who wrote the bill, than it is to deal with any real facts. Sadly, the union lobby just like they do with their anger at Wall Street just don’t seem to understand that Kasich had very little to do with Senate Bill 5 known now as Issue 2. It was a bunch of Senators, many of whom I know, that wrote the bill based on what people like me told them we wanted to see happen. And if the public unions succeed in getting Issue 2 removed as a law, people like me are not going to go away. This is just getting started. This is the first step.

The reason for this persistence is that I’m not going to pay higher taxes to maintain a 43.4% difference in benefits. That’s just stupid. I’ve known this disparity existed for a long time, but I didn’t know it was even THAT bad as indicated in the AEI Report. I had been thinking it was around 30%, which I thought was too much. So this report reveals that it’s far worse than even I thought. And in my opinion if the public workers decided to leave public service, then good. We need a smaller government as it is, and if the pay wasn’t so good, then people wouldn’t want to work for the government so badly. Then maybe we’d get people working in government who do it as a sacrifice instead of trying to enrich themselves at tax payer expense. And before all the teachers, firefighters, and cops write me to say, “Oh, you are a big mean guy,” if what I said wasn’t true, then there wouldn’t be so many abuses of the retirement law. Double-dipping alone costs the state of Ohio millions and millions of dollars, and people in the private sector do not have that option. The retirement at 55 needs to be abolished, and with or without Issue 2, we’re coming after it. It doesn’t matter if it’s this year, or next year, or the year after, sooner or later those abusive privileges will be leaving, because I won’t shut my mouth until they are gone, and I’m not alone.

So public unions, go ahead and show videos of crying babies, and burning buildings and hope nobody looks too closely at the scam you and your unions have been running, which every single one of you know you are guilty of. Because the facts don’t lie, even though you wish they did. You have been cheating the taxpayer by 43.4% and you owe that back to each and every private sector worker sooner or later. Nobody in their right mind would vote to increase their own taxes now that they know you have been screwing them over in dramatic ways and hiding the crime behind their children, their sick, and the victims of crime. Such a thing is disgraceful, and not worth the money we pay you, even if it was equal with the private sector, which it isn’t.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com