I read this morning how, despite the current state budget crisis, firemen won't take a pay cut. They do risk their lives, true, but the police do as well, and they didn't refuse flatly to take a pay cut.
Our illustrious governor wants us to take a bigger pay cut again because he refuses to raise taxes. Much as I respect that, I think the problem remains as always that if 50% of the state budget is for wages then we have too many people on the government payroll. The only workable solution I see is to cut government employees.
People in positions of risk and responsibility like to set themselves up as exceptions to the rule. Firemen claim they have hard jobs, but they know before they go out, unlike the beat cop or traffic citation, the nature of the situation into which they walk. The governor has a hard job, but his secretary doesn't warrant a $20K pay raise next year. They're not suffering. They make sure their coffers are stuffed while they ask us to sacrifice.
There are people in every echelon of every entity who are paid disporportionate to their contribution. At my last job, I performed at an average 130% of expectation yet never qualified for a bonus for mitigating reasons exigent to my control. In fact, they started staffing our shift predicated on the proposition that I was going to be able to give 130% in perpetuity, which of course I did not do. At my current job, there are people without whom we could manage. It would burden the remainder to be sure to pick up their work, but we could manage without them. As a matter of fact, do we even need a governor? What has he actually accomplished? Argh.
Our illustrious governor wants us to take a bigger pay cut again because he refuses to raise taxes. Much as I respect that, I think the problem remains as always that if 50% of the state budget is for wages then we have too many people on the government payroll. The only workable solution I see is to cut government employees.
People in positions of risk and responsibility like to set themselves up as exceptions to the rule. Firemen claim they have hard jobs, but they know before they go out, unlike the beat cop or traffic citation, the nature of the situation into which they walk. The governor has a hard job, but his secretary doesn't warrant a $20K pay raise next year. They're not suffering. They make sure their coffers are stuffed while they ask us to sacrifice.
There are people in every echelon of every entity who are paid disporportionate to their contribution. At my last job, I performed at an average 130% of expectation yet never qualified for a bonus for mitigating reasons exigent to my control. In fact, they started staffing our shift predicated on the proposition that I was going to be able to give 130% in perpetuity, which of course I did not do. At my current job, there are people without whom we could manage. It would burden the remainder to be sure to pick up their work, but we could manage without them. As a matter of fact, do we even need a governor? What has he actually accomplished? Argh.
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