In the “Your 2 cents” page of yesterday’s Asbury Park Press’ @issue section there is an entry from someone (a teacher, I presume) using the name “sniperfire”. The appropriately-named writer illustrates the arrogant mind-set that that results from a policy of allowing the unionization of public workers. Let’s examine it one sentence at a time:
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If a teacher who starts at $32,000 a year is paying a couple of thousand a year for benefits, what is the benefit of being a public employee. (sic)
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1) $32,000 is starting pay. For a young person fresh out of college with no family to support that’s not bad. And the salary quickly rises. The average pay for New Jersey public school teachers is around $65,000 (5th highest in the country) plus benefits that put it into six figures. And that’s the average. For every one of “sniperfire’s” $32,000 teachers, there’s an $80,000 teacher. AND THIS IS FOR 9 MONTHS WORK!
2) There should be no benefit to being a public employee versus a private employee. As a public employee, your pay necessitates the use of government force in the form of taxes. Because the use of force is involved, we should be careful that there be no special advantage taken. We used to understand that and that is why civil servants used to make less than those in the private sector. The only benefit was the job security that came with working for the government.
3) Learn how to use a question mark when a sentence is in the form of a question, teacher! (again, I presume).
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Regardless of what people think, there is a zero chance of a public employee ever becoming rich.
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1) Many of us in the private economy would consider yearly compensation north of $100,000 pretty damn rich, especially for 9 months work. And there are many that make over $200,000. For some, like the recently-indicted Michael Ritacco, even that isn’t enough.
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They are all upset because the economy went into the dumps, and they picked the wrong line of employment during a recession.
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1) The economy is “in the dumps” because of the massive expansion of the public sector at the expense of the private sector. Recessions don’t just happen. They are caused.
2) The recession has affected nearly every worker in the private sector. So in “sniperfire’s” opinion, anyone who gets paid through the voluntary exchange of one’s labor for a paycheck picked the “wrong line of employment”. Unlike unionized public workers, we have to produce for our employers something of greater value to them than the amount of our pay. The use of force, during a recession or not, is not a moral way to get ahead.
3) Not very many of us picked our line of work “during a recession”. I, for example, have been working in the same industry since 1978.
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When the economy picks back up and everyone starts making all their money again, will there be cries for the public employee to get their benefits back?
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1) The economy will not pick back up as long as we have the bloated public sector “sniperfire” advocates for. In the USSR, where everyone was a government worker, their recession lasted seventy years.
2) Even before the recession public workers made more than their counterparts in the private economy. The recession just made the gap even greater.
3) Unfortunately, even Chris Christie isn’t talking about ending public workers’ benefits. He is only trying to get them a little bit closer to what they are for the rest of us.
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New Jersey will never get out of the ditch as long as we are forced to employ people like “sniperfire”. Our only hope is in declaring bankruptcy, firing all the “sniperfires” out there, and starting over with a limited, and non-unionized public workforce. And we should privatize the schools while we’re at it. Let “sniperfire” see how much fun we in the private sector are having.
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