AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

@parados,

Yes, we did contact every household. But we didn't hire anybody or recruit any volunteers until the work was ready to be done. The printers and the trainer don't count as they were budgeted expenses. But using my example, my math says it would take 30,000 people to conduct the census over a period of a few weeks. So what will 66000 people employed from now until then be doing?

1 Reply

@parados,

When you look at the numbers of federal employees for the last decades, you'll notice that obviously there had been always some thousands additionally temporary census workers.

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@parados,

You need to get your calculator repaired I believe.

One civilian federal employee for every 167Americans--that does not include the military which at least is a Constitutionally mandated function of government.

But we need 66000 more people right now to do work for a census that won't be done for another year. (Oh I forgot, my community survey project took about 60 days from start to finish including compiling and presenting the final report to the City Council.)

What will those 66000 new people be doing all that time?

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@Foxfyre,

I would imagine they will be hired to waste the money that tea baggers have to pay in taxes. I doubt there is any real work involved in taking the census each decade.

By the way.. Do you know when the budget was set for the Census? You might be surprised.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

When you look at the numbers of federal employees for the last decades, you'll notice that obviously there had been always some thousands additionally temporary census workers.

I have no problem with temporary census workers. But 66000 people hired a year in advance--what WILL those 66000 people be doing that existing staff wouldn't be able to do?

But wow....your figures show 2.9 million civilian employees. My data must really be old. Make that one federal employee for every 100 Americans instead of 167 Americans. That's much better right? Not!

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

I didn't include the military Fox...
Geez.. Why do you make such comments?

There are 623,000 CIVILIAN employees in Defense.
That includes those working in Washington and the civilians that work on bases.

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@Foxfyre,

I don't get why the official data states that the number of federal employes was e.g. in 1970 exactly 3.81% of all employees and in 2007 just 1.85%.

But certainly those figures don't look as dangerous as Foxfyre's calculation.

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@genoves,

Yes I do. Here is the link for more "nonesense" from this Pulitzer nominee.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/139869/how_is_it_that_the_wall_street_journal_editors_have_absolutely_no_memory_of_the_last_8_years/?page=1

Within two years the budget surpluses ($231 billion)were gone, and the national debt was on it's way back up as the Bushies began borrowing again to make ends meet. By the time they left office they'd add another $5 trillion to the national debt.

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@parados,

I didn't say that you did include the military Parados.

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@Foxfyre,

http://2010.census.gov/2010census/recent_news/010342.html

I suppose you and your 3 temp workers checked every address personally before you sent anything out, right?

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I don't get why the official data states that the number of federal employes was e.g. in 1970 exactly 3.81% of all employees and in 2007 just 1.85%.

But certainly those figures don't look as dangerous as Foxfyre's calculation.

Okay you do the math. Your figures show 2.9 million civilian federal employees. There are roughly 300 million Americans. My calculator says that equals 1 civilian federal employee for every 103 Amerians. What does your calculator say?

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

http://2010.census.gov/2010census/recent_news/010342.html

I suppose you and your 3 temp workers checked every address personally before you sent anything out, right?

No. But the city and county provided up to date registries and the phone and utility companies helped us out too. We would have had to do the cross checks manually so we trusted the lists we got. I can't remember the exact percentage, but the percentage of undelivered questionnaires was very small. They have computers who can do that now though. I suppose if you think those 66000 people are checking addresses now, how reliable do you think that will be a year from now? Especially with the homeless people?

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@Foxfyre,

I don't calcute myself - it's done by US federal employees on the link I gave above.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Fine Walter. Believe whatever you want to believe. But even you can see that 1.85% of a 100% is a lot of people to be on the government payroll. I have never quibbled about those necessary to perform the Constitutionally mandated functions of government. I just want to know what 66,000 people hired a year in advance of the US census will be doing. My tax dollars are paying for them. I don't think that is an unreasonable request no matter how unreasonable Parados thinks I am for even asking.

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@Foxfyre,

Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Quote:

The Federal Government’s essential duties include defending the United States from foreign aggression and terrorism, representing U.S. interests abroad, enforcing laws and regulations, and administering domestic programs and agencies. U.S. citizens are particularly aware of the Federal Government when they pay their income taxes each year, but they usually do not consider the government’s role when they watch a weather forecast, purchase fresh and uncontaminated groceries, travel by highway or air, or make a deposit at their bank. Workers employed by the Federal Government play a vital role in these and many other aspects of our daily lives.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Something else that struck me. If we picked an arbitrary average wage of say $50,000 for each of those 2.9 million civilian workers, that would total $145 billion a year. The proposed federal budget for 2010 is $3.6 trillion which translates to an average of about $1.2 million expended by each one of those employees or $11,650 for every man, woman, and child in America. $46,600 for every family of four if equally distributed--that is for ONE YEAR.

How long do you think a country can sustain itself with numbers like that? Reduce the non essential, non constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government and you return a whole bunch of those folks back to the private sector where they become producers instead of consumers of the taxpayer dollars.

Meanwhile, what are we getting for those 66,000 new workers hired by the federal government last month?

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@Foxfyre,

What scares me more is the national debt as a percentage of our GDP; it was 75% under Bush, and it certainly will be increasing under Obama.

Nobody is sure how much debt is really sustainable for long periods of time, because our country went into debt to fund WWII, and we came out of that okay. I'm sure economists will argue pros and cons about this issue for decades to come.

The questions I have now are a) how much of the current spending are actually loans vs outright spending, b) what will be the actual impact of the US implementing a universal health care system to make our products and services more competitive world-wide, c) how much more will our country spend on Iraq and Afghanistan, and d) how will all this spending impact inflation - how much and when?

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@Foxfyre,

After checking, my arbitrary $50k estimate as an average federal wage plus benefits wasn't even close.

Quote:

Federal Worker Pay Blasts Off
Posted by Chris Edwards

Newly released data show that federal employee wages and benefits continue a rapid ascent above and beyond private sector pay levels. The data was released last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. (See tables 6.2, 6.3, 6.5, and 6.6).

The new data show that the 1.8 million federal civilian workers earned an average wage of $77,143 in 2007, which is 61 percent higher than the $48,035 average in the U.S. private sector. That 61 percent pay advantage has increased from a 34 percent advantage in 2000.

Looking at total compensation (wages plus benefits), federal workers earned an average $116,450 in 2007, which is more than double the $57,615 private sector average. The federal compensation advantage increased from 68 percent in 2000 to 102 percent today. Federal workers not only earn much more than private sector workers, their earnings advantage is getting more pronounced every year.

Federal compensation rose quickly during the 1990s, but even faster during the 2000s. I call this the “Bush Bounce” because it appears that the Bush administration has caved into federal union demands for expanded pay year after year. Between 2000 and 2007, average federal compensation increased at an annual average rate of 6.3 percent, which compares to the private sector increase of 3.5 percent. During the 1990s, average federal worker compensation increased at an average rate of 5.1 percent. The charts below illustate the “blast off” in federal wages and compensation.

The upshot is that with a federal budget deficit of $500 billion, federal pay restraint should be a priority of the next administration. I’ve proposed freezing federal pay for a period of years, while privatizing costly activities such as air traffic control. The BEA data show that compensation for federal civilian workers cost taxpayers $213 billion in 2007, so there are substantial savings possible here. (Those costs do not include the $166 billion in military compensation costs in 2007).

The Wall Street Journal has called the overly generous federal pay environment “Club Fed.” How long will average American wage earners be willing to foot the tax bill for this elite Washington club?
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/08/13/federal-worker-pay-blasts-off/

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@candide,

The writer of the column is a nobody. Post some real figures from people who know--Not the jerk Pizzo.

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@Foxfyre,

You seem to be quite adept at finding good data, Foxfyre.

The figure---61% higher than the average is mindboggling. The figure-$116,450 is even more unbelievable.

BO( look at the people he has put on his staff) has loaded up with minorities. He has mined every dark corner of the Chicago ghetto.

I can't find any data. Perhaps you know. For years, people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Malcom X and Minister Farrakhan preached that black people were not getting a fair share.

There are approximately 35 Million blacks in the USA. That means they are 12% of the populace.

I am sure that they make up at least 20% of federal workers.

That's what you call reverse discrimation especially crippling during the 8.9% unemployment BO gave us.

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AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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