Win The Lottery, Work for the Government

It’s settled. People that play the lottery should lay down their scratchoff coins and take up an employment application to work for the government. After all, winning the lottery is a one-in-a-million proposition but if you get a job with the government your hitting the lottery seems to be a sure thing.

USA Today is reporting that federal workers are earning double their private sector counterparts these days. So, you see, all you have to do to get rich, apparently, is to go to work for government. The reports tells us that federal workers have been the lucky recipients of bigger than average pay and benefit increases than those of the private sector for the last nine years in a row. It also finds that “the compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.”

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available. The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.

Yet even as federal workers have hit the jackpot simply by have “you’re hired” stamped on their applications, President Obama is asking for a 1.4% across the board increase for these taxpayer supported “workers.” This doesn’t include the automatic seniority pay hikes that thousands of federal workers will see. What are the unions saying about this lopsided pay scale? Why, it’s totally justified, they say, because federal workers are just smarter and more skilled than everyone else. Remember that when you are dealing with the IRS, or trying to call you representatives. They are better, smarter, more trained than you.

Warner Todd Huston——Bio and Archives

Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.

He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.