Two Public Pay Standards, One Statement of Values

[SHRED]

More excellent points by David Sirota:

EXCERPTS:

Recall that in recent years, we’ve witnessed two separate debates over two types of taxpayer-subsidized laborers. First, we saw a brief argument over how much taxpayer money should pay government-sponsored bankers on Wall Street. Now, we’re having a more prolonged discussion about how much taxpayer money should pay public employees in our schools, police departments, fire departments and infrastructure agencies.

The first set of workers, underwritten by ongoing multi-trillion-dollar Treasury and Federal Reserve bailouts, mostly cannibalize wealth through foreclosures and speculation. The second set of workers, by contrast, primarily create and protect wealth through educating kids, preventing fires and crimes, and building public assets.

~SNIP~

In this corrupt system, public compensation decisions by bought-off elected officials highlight a larger corporatist ideology—one that says attracting the best and brightest to the “greed is good” financial industry is more important than attracting that workforce to common-good endeavors.

In this view, $500,000 isn’t nearly enough taxpayer cash to retain government-funded bankers, but $48,000 (the average teacher salary in Wisconsin) is too much to pay educators. In this view, the government is “there to serve the banks,” as the new chairman of Congress’ Financial Services Committee said, but police and firefighters are expected to serve the population, even as those police officers and firefighters are berated for receiving middle-class wages.
Yes, in this destructive and now-ascendant view, government exists to pad private profits but do nothing more—and that’s the kind of government we should all expect to get.


http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7005/two_public_pay_standards_one_statement_of_values/


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