George Rebane

I would like to offer a few observations on some comments that responded to my column ‘Public Pensions – a breakdown’ in the 15aug09 Union.  For openers, I don’t know any of the commenters either personally or as individuals in the public round.  Specific comments by people claiming to be or to have been public employees confirm and illustrate the points I have been making regarding government and their workers.  Most of these comments defend hills not attacked and vigorously assault hills undefended.

The following is to be taken as characterizations of the government employee in the aggregate.  Certain individual (topical) cases may always be advanced in the counter argument.  I believe the statistics where available will show them to be outliers.

We start with some compelling observations:
• Governments at all levels – federal, state, local – have been running large deficits and/or accumulating unfunded liabilities the repayment of which is uncertain at best and impossible at worst.
• The single largest element in the cost of government is the salaries and benefits paid to government employees – in short, government labor.
• Government employees are a favored class of labor in the country.  The average government employee annually earns about $66,558 compared to the $42,635 average earned by the private sector employee.  Government employees’ pension, healthcare, and other benefits are unmatched in the private sector.  When total benefits are considered, these numbers become $100,178 and $51,876 respectively (Cato Institute).
• An alarming fraction of today’s youth seek careers in non-wealth producing sectors that are primarily in ‘public service’.  Our public education system promotes, directs, and enables them to go into fields funded by charity (e.g. foundations) and taxpayers.
• A ponzi scheme is characterized by making contracted payouts to early participants using monies collected from the growing cohort of the most recent participants.  It collapses when monies from new participants doesn’t cover current obligations.

My columns have dealt with the facts relating to the operation of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System or Calpers.  These illustrated the generous benefits afforded by the state and local governments, how the system could be gamed, how the unfunded liabilities can grow, and how the whole system works in a fog that ultimately puts the taxpayers AND the expectant government employees at risk.

Commenting government employees seemed not to understand any of this, but took my little tutorial to be a direct assault on the worth of their careers and delivered labor.  To the extent that the article exposed some of the weaknesses in the system that may motivate corrective action, they had a case.  However, the ad hominem attacks on the courier showed a deep lack of understanding about what is happening in the land.  And their self-justification indicates that they believe themselves to be worth every penny they have been and will be paid.  This demonstrates that they will continue voting for politicians and policies that will keep us on the road to bankruptcy.

(I do want to highlight one of the comments from a retired postal worker that illustrates the hubris of many government employees.  The man states unequivocally that “I am neither glaciated nor glazed of mind.  I was employed in the public sector, and was never overpaid nor overpensioned. THAT is a fact.”  In truth he cannot make such an assertion, only those of us who pay him for his services can do that.  The US Postal Service – losing billions every year – has never been held up as a paragon of government efficiency, quite the opposite.  Its lack of performance has given rise to an entire for-profit industry in the private sector.  Including the state of his mind in connection with his own pay illustrates the depth of his confusion and abrogates his denial.  He apparently is totally unaware of the public debate and attitudes toward the compensation of government employees which he seems to think I invented.)

To me these comments also indicate that many of these folks were prescient and realistic, and that brings us to the second point.  All things considered, most government employees have done themselves and their families proud.  They recognized early on that their abilities and skill sets would not earn them nearly as much in the private sector as in ‘public service’.  With what they had to offer, these people cast their lot correctly.  Under the same constraints, I cannot say that I would have done anything differently.

But in making that choice, they inadvertently also chose to draw their long term sustenance from a commons, a commons that is on the verge of destruction.  And now all they can think to do is to rail against anyone who reminds them of this truth.  You don’t see them taking to task their political leaders and union bosses, the ones who got them and us into this quandary.  Today it is only the taxpayer and the tax paying messenger whom they identify as their enemies.

Meanwhile, their numbers are destined to grow as every new ‘free’ government benefice requires hiring thousands more for its administration, monitoring, delivery, or forcing it down our throats.  But that future may be the only one available to our country as the number of our adults, uncompetitive in the global labor markets, grows.  The challenge is to affect this wealth redistribution while still encouraging the generation of the extra wealth that can be so redistributed.  (My suggestion for one way to do this is here.)

None of these brutal aspects of today’s reality can be discussed in the open by sitting politicians and established thought leaders.  The kind of backlash seen here in the small, would destroy them in the large.  And yet, perhaps this is another door to the public forum of ideas that we bloggers can open.  We can take the slings and arrows of our small/local readerships while the introduced notions are either picked up and live, or die as we lick our wounds.  But once introduced with force and clarity, the unsaid can gain a greater voice, and a fruitful debate on the whole matter can follow.

[update]  The comment beat continues on the Union’s website.  The 950 character limit is necessary, I suppose, but it sure limits the ensuing discussion to the ‘Yes, you are!’ ‘No I’m not!’ level.

I am hoping for a response on the recent request for a Calpers audit.  Instead, the focus seems to be on the requestor I cited who is judged to be somehow biased (I don’t know the man), thereby invalidating the request of one of the most opaque public pension managers in the nation.  Well, that’s one way of handling it.

“I guess Rebane is just one more Richie out to kill off the middle class any way he can.”  Wow, where did this come from?  How does a discussion of government employee pension plans seek to “kill off the middle class”.  I confess, the arguments of some commenters here are beyond anything I’m capable of handling.  Their point, I guess.

“Less emphasis on worrying about armed public employee neighbors and more on the facts wouldn't hurt either.”  “public employees are "walking armed among us" (perhaps suggesting we take special care when approaching school crossing guards, ditch tenders, and office clerks)”  If such hyperboles and witticisms(?) are needed to bolster the arguments in this forum, so be it.  But I think it was Alan Greenspan who wrote way back when, that every sheaf of government regulations hides a policeman’s gun.  Those who don’t feel the ratchet of government control tightening daily will become the ‘public servants’ who gladly lead us into our brave new world.  Chairman Mao new exactly from where all power grows.

The irritated discussants in the comment thread have yet to present any evidence of their claimed factual errors, which when received will serve to appropriately amend my piece.

Some years ago, the longitudinal study ‘National Assessment of Adult Literacy’ by the Department of Education found that about one out of twenty of us can reliably identify the main point or subject of a paragraph.  Journalists, equally impeded, immediately responded by starting to write paragraphs consisting of one simple sentence in the hope that this would solve the problem.  Evidence shows that it hasn’t.  At some considerable risk, the rest of us thought more of our readership and refused to go along.  Thus we reap what we have so carelessly sown.