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curious2
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2013 Apr 18, 3:42am
So why don't people in the private sector clamor to get jobs in the awesome public sector?
Be a Public Servant! Buy a yacht! World Tour! Rolls Royce!
Some people do, for example Newt Gingrich with his notorious Tiffany's bill. (A gluttonous hypocrite has to keep his third wife happy in their "open marriage" somehow.) The Bushes and Clintons have profited famously from their time in the public sector, but they are hardly alone, as reports of California civil servants retiring with lifetime pensions over $100k/yr have become routine.
Most people don't though, and the reason has to do with Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. Michael Moore has presented this well too. Most Americans believe in the Horatio Alger stories, and Republicans in particular have exploited that belief to sell tax cuts for the rich, because even roofers imagine that if they apply themselves they'll strike it rich someday. You can show young adults any number of statistics saying that borrowing $ to get an advanced degree in an uneconomic field is probably going to make them poorer, but they'll assume that they're special and they're going to be among the few for whom it works out perfectly. It's confirmation bias, and the inability of the pre-human brain to understand aggregate statistics based on large numbers: tell an eager 18yo an anecdote about JK Rowling and Tom Clancy and John Grisham and their vast fortunes, and then tell her some impersonal statistics about how most English majors don't make much money with those degrees, and she'll conclude that her ideas are special and she'll be the next JK Rowling rather than the next Mrs. Krabappel.
zzyzzx
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2013 Apr 18, 3:53am
So why don't people in the private sector clamor to get jobs in the awesome public sector?
Because the public sector jobs are so good that nobody ever quits, or gets fired. That's makes them really hard to get since job openings are scarce.
CL
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2013 Apr 18, 4:06am
So why don't people in the private sector clamor to get jobs in the awesome public sector?
Because the public sector jobs are so good that nobody ever quits, or gets fired. That's makes them really hard to get since job openings are scarce.
According to the rightwing, Government just grows and grows, is inefficient, countless holidays and so on. So, there should be ample opportunities every year!curious2 says
The Bushes and Clintons have profited famously from their time in the public sector,
Mostly, post-career profiting. This is more like "I could be President of America or CEO of a company"....
"I could be Chief of Police or mid-level Manager"
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I thought it was relatively widely accepted that Government pay was usually lower than the private sector but that the trade-off was stability. They also tend to receive good benefits, perhaps better than their private sector counterparts.
However, I recently discovered that many on the right believe that the Government pays better in addition to their myriad benefits.
Is there any hard data or otherwise convincing information to prove this one way or the other?