[quote=surveyor][quote=CA renter]
Like brian (IIRC) said above, there’s an assumption that just because someone works *directly* for a govt entity — as opposed to contracting with the govt — that the govt is overpaying. I’ve seen just as often a private party (company or individual) being overcompensated for things, varying from labor to real estate, to goods received, etc.
I think it’s a stretch to assume that govt employees are automatically less efficient or more expensive (especially when one considers the quality of the work involved) than those in the private market.[/quote]
Correct, not all government employees are less efficient or more expensive than their counterparts. There are plenty of examples when government is being run efficiently. However, by its nature, government is an inefficient enterprise. The forces that would make businesses efficient are either nonexistent or have minimal effect on government.
Also, yes, there are times when businesses do overpay. However, the critical difference is that these businesses actually spend their own money and if they continue mismanagement of that money, they will go out of business. Government is not subject to that particular quality.
But I did want to address a particular statement of yours.
[quote]All of the wealth amassed by the very rich comes from somewhere as well — it comes from workers, customers, and others who are captive to the financial system that is created by and for those with tremendous wealth.[/quote]
This is what is called “Zero sum”, the line of thinking that if someone makes money, someone else must have lost that money, that there is a pie that cannot grow bigger and is limited. This particular phenomenon does occur in government.
However, businesses do not work this way. When businesses work, they often create a bigger pie or more pies where nothing existed before. Often the situation businesses create is win-win: the business improves the lives of its workers, through continued work and success. The business also improves the lives of its customers, allowing them access to a new product, superior product, or a cheaper product.
For the zero sum situation to be valid, there wouldn’t be much improvement in mankind’s society, even as time goes on.
However, as the United States has shown, businesses and its capitalist system have not only created millionaires where there were previously NONE (“The Millionaire Next Door” – 80% of new millionaires are first generation), it has also brought up many workers of those businesses and improved their quality of life. There are many technologies and benefits that were available to only the richest before but are now available even to the poorest of the United States.
When you see people on welfare having LCD tv’s and iPhone’s, sometimes you gotta admit that the United States must not be that bad for the poor.[/quote]
Have to agree with what pri-dk just posted. It’s not the “millionaires” I (or most other “liberals”) have a problem with; as many of those people have earned their money, one way or another; nor do I have a problem with people who become rich by starting a business and WORKING for their money (they, or their parents, etc. — at some point, it was EARNED).
I do have a problem with the “uber-wealthy” who make money by pure speculation or by inserting themselves in the middle of transactions (often forcing people to use their “services” because they write legislation that forces people to use their services in certain transactions). I have a problem with the money-sucking sponges who do NOT benefit society in any way, but manage to usurp a rather significant portion of our economy (and who are far worse than any poor “welfare queens”).
Look at what’s happened to earnings in the financial sector. The “labor share” in the financial sector refers to the earnings of those in the financial sector — be sure to check out the chart and see the comparison between those in the financial and non-financial sectors:
———–
Perhaps most curious is that the
labor share for financial corporations skyrocketed in the current crisis.
It increased by 44 percent—from 0.50 in mid-2007 to a record-high
of 0.72—by the end of 2008. Why such a big shift? Labor compensation
did not change much while value added declined dramatically.
The U.S. financial sector increased substantially during the past
five decades. Growth between 1995 and 2006 certainly translated
into record-high shareholder returns. Labor compensation returns
in the financial sector were also dramatically high at the onset of
the current crisis.
Do realize that wealth can be defined in a number of ways, but I define it as the control and ownership of the world’s finite resources — the monetary units might change, but the end result is what I care about. In this sense, it is most definitely “zero-sum.”
