The public sector
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The public sector is the part of the economy controlled and funded by local, state, and national governments. Its primary purpose is to serve the community and to provide essential public services such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and public safety rather than generate corporate profit. It is funded primarily through taxpayer money and government fees. The public sector works for us, the taxpayers. Somewhere down the line their thinking has got turned around. They view us as the serfs, and they are the lords.
When you take into consideration the expansion of public services, mostly demanded by those in the private sector, demanding services that they want done for them, that they are not willing to do for themselves, then later complain about the burden of high taxes that they must pay. It has grown to not only a financial burden to those who are paying the taxes, but also a political force in which politicians cater to in order to secure their vote.
In October 1978, President Jimmy Carter, signed into law the Civil Service Reform act which allowed federal employees bargaining rights. Once they unionized the federal work force, then along with the escalation of the number of federal employees, it became a burden to the private sector work force that had to pay for this expansion. The power of this unfettered growth of federal employees has grown so powerful that it has turned Virginia from a red state to a blue state. This is just one example of how the growth of the public federal work force impacts our elections and our taxes. The principle is still the same when it comes to state and local public work force. It is ever expanding and demanding.
In the private sector, a person must work all their life. The age is 67 for those who are born in 1960 and those afterwards. Yet, we hear politicians are crying out to raise it to 70 to save it, but you never hear of them raising the retirement age in the public sector. There seems to be no comparison of the pay that the private sector draws on a certain job verses the public sector on a comparable job, especially when you consider all the benefits that goes with it. We in the private sector need to lobby for our needs and not for our wants.
There was a story of a farmer who had a mule and every year he had to plant 20 acres of corn to feed the mule. After a while he didn’t know if the mule was working for him, or he was working for the mule. I think we are now working for the mule.
