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Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I’m not a fan of government. Part of this stems from a study of human nature. People are just better stewards of their own money and liberties than they are with others. Expecting bureaucrats to treat tax money as if it’s their own money, or to treat the laws and regulations they promulgate as if they’re only going to be enforced against themselves and their families, is expecting way too much. Human beings never have, and never will, roll like that.
But part of my distaste for government also stems from personal experience. For twenty-one years I worked for a municipal highway department on Long Island. So I saw up close and personal how “public servants” treated the taxpayers. And believe me, it wasn’t pretty. My guess is that our municipality gave the taxpayers fifty cents worth of service for every tax dollar they surrendered to us.
So what accounted for this dismal service? In a word, management. Management—the politicians and commissioners who ran my municipality—was far more concerned with staying in power and rewarding its political backers than with providing the taxpayers with excellent service at a reasonable cost.
This indictment of my former bosses isn’t made lightly. Most of the commissioners I knew or worked for were basically good, decent people. And I don’t want to think ill of them. But they did have feet of clay, and they did embrace two workplace norms that obliterated any chance we had of becoming the New England Patriots of municipal government: the culture of sloth and the culture of tribute. Let me explain.
Culture of Sloth
For three years during my government career, I worked as the foreman of a road crew. Yes, I was once the ringleader of the greatest affront to taxpayer sensibilities ever conceived: the sight of four or five guys standing around while one poor schlub shoveled asphalt or worked the jackhammer.
I wish I could claim that the greatest affront to taxpayer sensibilities ever conceived was a myth, that road crews really weren’t accomplished at the art of goldbricking. But sadly I can’t. We were a disgrace. In fact, to give you an idea of just how disgraceful we were, I would like to recount how our typical day of “work” unfolded. Be forewarned, groovy freedomist. What you’re about to read is not for the faint of heart.
- 7:00-7:30 am: I would meet the crew in the shape-up room and tell them what the day’s assignment was. I would also tell each crew member what his role would be in completing the day’s assignment. And every day I performed this ritual, there was much “gnashing of the teeth.” No one ever seemed excited about the opportunity to “serve” the public.
- 7:30-9:00 am: Everyone in the crew, including me, would have an hour and a half to get breakfast, gather the tools, equipment, and materials necessary for the day’s assignment, and get to the job site.
- 9:00-12:00 pm: This was the time allocated to carry out the day’s assignment. On most occasions, we finished the day’s assignment around 11:00 am. Very rarely did we actually labor for three whole hours. And it was even rarer for us to labor beyond three hours. On those extremely rare occasions where we toiled into the afternoon, there was much consternation in the crew. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat deprived of on-the-clock leisure.
- 12:00-2:30 pm: The crew’s job at this point was to get lunch and stay out of trouble. And by “stay out of trouble,”I don’t mean to suggest that management was concerned about the public’s safety. (The guys in the field had many shortcomings. But few if any were thugs.) No, management was more concerned about hiding our culture of sloth from the public. The last thing it needed was a citizen videotaping a highway employee sleeping in his truck for three hours. So I and my fellow foremen always coached the guys to keep moving, to never park at some location for more than a half hour. It was one thing to be slothful; it was quite another thing to flaunt it.
- 2:30-3:00 pm: The last thirty minutes of our work day was dedicated to returning to the yard and putting away whatever tools and equipment we removed from the yard to complete the day’s assignment.
My goal here, of course, is not to pick on my municipality’s road crews. They were no more slothful than the people who manned my municipality’s office cubicles. But because road crews had a far more regimented workday, it was easier to document the culture of sloth by focusing on them.
The real question for us is not why my co-workers and I worked so little. We merely adjusted our efforts to meet expectations. If management demanded eight hours of rigorous effort, we would have worked our asses off. No, the real question is why management set such a low bar. In what way did management benefit from having a lazy, uncaring workforce? Could it be that one man’s culture of sloth is another man’s gold?
Culture of Tribute
The best book I ever read on government was called Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. George Washington Plunkitt was a ward boss in Tammany Hall during the early 1900s. Tammany Hall, in turn, was a political machine that basically ran New York City politics from the 1790s up until the 1960s. And of all the marvelous insights Plunkitt provides in this political science gem, the following is his best.
“There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.'”
Honest graft was how Mr. Plunkitt described what we understand as “pay-to-play” or “quid-quo-pro” politics. Politicians have something of value to give, and people pay politicians to get a piece of that something. Well, management at my municipality was the master of honest graft. Here are three examples of how it “saw opportunity” and “took advantage of it.”
- Many civil service positions were filled on the basis of civil service exams. Under civil service law, if management wanted to fill a position it had to choose one of the top three test scorers. But it wasn’t required to take the top scorer on the list. And it wasn’t required to fill the competitive position. It could scrap the test results and reissue the test two or three years later. In theory, this gave management the wiggle room to fill positions with the best possible people. In practice, however, it pressured the top three test scorers to donate money to the Republican Party (the party that dominated my municipality while I was there) so that 1) they increased their chances of being picked and 2) they decreased the likelihood of the test being scrapped.
- Under civil service law, management was allowed to reward outstanding employees with any number of “merit raises.” A merit raise or bump, as the rank-and-file referred to it, amounted to a 3% raise above and beyond whatever the contract raise called for. Say for example the union contract called for a 5% wage increase in 2017. Outstanding employees who got a single bump would get an 8% raise in 2017 (5% contract raise + 3% merit raise). Really outstanding employees who got a double bump would get an 11% raise in 2017 (5% contract raise + 6% merit raise). Here’s the problem, though. In all my twenty-one years at my municipality, I never saw anyone get a merit raise for doing outstanding work for the taxpayers. The only people who got merit raises were those who did outstanding work for the Republicans.
- Suppose you own a construction firm and you won one of the contracts that my municipality awards to do asphalt or concrete work. That’s great. But what if my municipality never issues you a work order under the contract? And what if my municipality did issue work orders but took its time paying you for the work you did? That would be bad for your construction firm. Maybe that’s why construction firms that had contracts with my municipality were always buying tickets to Republican Party fundraisers. They wanted to make sure bad things didn’t happen.
“Okay, okay,” I hear you shouting. “What does honest graft have to do with the culture of sloth?” Well, think about it. Management can adopt any management style it wants. Management can be ball-busting taskmasters, or it can be pushovers. The rank-and-file workers would obviously prefer a wimpy management style. So management goes to labor and offers this bargain: you help us stay in power and we’ll see that you have cushy jobs.
And that’s the way things played out while I was at my municipality. My coworkers and I contributed a lot of money to the Republican Party through our union. Union members knocked on a lot of doors, mailed a lot of letters, and posted a lot of campaign signs in order to get Republicans elected. And management went easy on the rank-and-file workers. Hello culture of sloth. Everyone won—except the taxpayers, of course.
Quick aside. Every time I watch the movie On the Waterfront, I think of my municipality. Johnny Friendly ran his docks the way management ran my municipality. It’s freakin’ scary. Did Elia Kazan toil for a highway department as a young man?
Making Management Interests Synonymous with Taxpayer Interests
Before I offer my solution to dysfunctional local government, I need to address three things. First, honest graft was not an official policy of my municipality. When I was hired, I wasn’t presented with an employee’s handbook that stated my advancement was predicated on my allegiance to the Republican Party. And no politician or commissioner ever told me I had to be “political” to get ahead. No, the practice of honest graft was made known through osmosis. Older workers would pull younger workers aside and explain how the system works. Non-political workers would see political workers getting more raises and promotions. It was as simple as that. No one in management explicitly stated the rules. But everyone eventually knew what the rules were.
Second, not every municipality or government agency is as dysfunctional as the one which employed me for twenty-one years. Two of my favorite bloggers, Matt over at Optimize Your Life, and Vicki over at Make Smarter Decisions, both work for government agencies that are far less dysfunctional. But for our purposes here, I’m going to assume that my municipality isn’t an anomaly. The men and women who run local government in this country aren’t imbued with superhuman morals. In other words, they’re not angels, and they’re just as likely to embrace honest graft as the people who ran my municipality.
Third, voting is a poor check on graft—honest or otherwise. For my entire adult life, some thirty-seven years, my fellow Americans and I have been “voting the bums out.” But the corruption, stupidity, and waste never ends. Whether it’s Republicans or Democrats at the helm, the culture of sloth and the culture of tribute keep rolling along. Again, let me turn to some Plunkitt of Tammany Hall wisdom to forever squash the notion that voting alone can quell the beast of honest graft (pardon the classic New Yorkese).
“A man that’d expict to thrain lobsters to fly in a year is called a loonytic; but a man that thinks men can be tu-rrned into angels by an iliction is called a rayformer an’ remains at large.”
Okay, we got two things working against us: human nature and the poor check that voting has on subduing honest graft. Are we forever doomed then to local government that is characterized by the culture of sloth and the culture of tribute? Not necessarily. The trick is to craft the system that aligns the interests of management with the interests of the taxpayers. Here’s my proposal.
- Fifty percent of a politician’s or a commissioner’s pay would be subject to a vote by the taxpayers. Say for example the Highway Commissioner of my municipality had an annual salary of $120K. He or she would get paid $2,307.69 every two weeks during the year ($60K ÷ 26). At the end of the year, he or she would get all or some of the remaining $60K (i.e., vote pay) based on how the taxpayers voted on the governing skills of management.
- Taxpayers would vote annually on the following yes or no question. Did management provide you with excellent service for your tax dollars?
- Vote pay would be awarded based on the following voting percentages.
Voter Happiness (Those Voting "YES" On Our Quality Control/Oversight Question) Percent Of Vote Pay Doled Out 90-100% 100% 80-89% 75% 70-79% 50% 60-69% 25% <60% 0%
So returning to our hypothetical Highway Commissioner, if 90% of the taxpayers agreed that management was providing excellent service, our hypothetical Highway Commissioner would get 100% of his or her vote pay ($60K) at the end of the year. If less than 60% of the taxpayers agreed that management was providing excellent service, our hypothetical Highway Commissioner would get 0% of his or her vote pay. - Any vote pay that is withheld by the taxpayers would go into the municipality’s rainy day fund or would be used to pay down the municipality’s outstanding debt.
- Except for a car, a politician or a commissioner must have the exact same supplemental benefits as the rank-and-file workers. In other words, if rank-and-file workers have company paid health insurance, politicians and commissioners can have company paid health insurance. If the rank-and-file workers don’t have company paid housing subsidies or company paid vacation vouchers, then politicians and commissioners can’t have company paid housing subsidies or company paid vacation vouchers. This codicil is needed so management won’t play games and place ever increasing amounts of politician and commissioner remuneration in benefits rather than salary, thus weakening the bite of the vote pay reform.
- The combined salary of a politician or a commissioner (base pay plus potential vote pay) may not exceed five times the salary of the lowest paid full-time employee. Thus, if the lowest paid full-time employee had an annual salary of $30K, the most any politician or commissioner could be paid would be $150K annually ($75K base pay + $75K vote pay).
- Management, defined here as politicians and appointed commissioners, may not comprise more than 5% of the municipality’s full-time workforce.
- Any politician who was in office during three consecutive years of 0% vote pay would be forced out once his or her term ended and forever barred from holding elected office in the municipality again.
Final Thoughts
Whew! That’s a lot to digest. (Mrs. Groovy made it half way through and quit.) Let’s suppose for the moment that a cheap, unhackable online system for voting was feasible and taxpayers could easily voice their disgust for management if the quality of local government dropped to lamentable levels. If this were the case, I don’t see how my proposal would fail to make management more accountable. Sure, honest graft would still exist. But if things got out of hand, and the taxpayers could be counted on to hit management where it hurt the most, in its wallet, management would have a strong incentive to stop the nonsense and “protect its phony baloney jobs.”
Okay, groovy freedomists, that’s all I got. What say you? Is my vote pay idea a worthy reform? Does it sufficiently align the interests of management with the interests of the taxpayers? Or is it just another well-meaning check and balance that can be easily thwarted by any group of politicians in thrall of honest graft? I would love to hear your thoughts. Peace.
I really like your thoughts. I’d like to see that if you run for office that you can only take money from your constituents with a nominal amount. No more money pouring in from the outside. If you are really good at what you do then your constituents will help elect you with their money. If not, bring on the next guy.
Amen, MSM. Does anyone even listen to or watch campaign advertisements anymore? With a YouTube channel and a website, it costs virtually nothing to get your message or beliefs out. Yet every election cycle, hundreds of millions are spent on campaigns. Pathetic.
I’m so behind in reading this, but your posts are always so fascinating. I think about this often – how there are some professions that seem to breed sloth or the stereotype of it. Honestly, I know that there are lazy teachers who work the system. But at least in my current building, the vast majority of people go so far beyond their regular responsibilities. But you’re right that these problems are an affront to taxpayers! Still, I could probably write a book about how performance-based pay just won’t cut it in all government sectors. It might be one thing when your variable is a pot hole, but when the variable is a living, breathing human whose beloved hamster died the morning of high-stakes testing (and they brought said hamster to school in a shoe box to show everyone)…it gets more complicated than that 😉
Completely agree, Penny. There’s a colossal difference between filling a pothole and helping a human being master some knowledge. The only way performance based pay could possibly work in education is if we make student IQ part of the calculus. For instance, if only 50% of the students have a high enough IQ to understand trigonometry, and only 50% of the students pass the state trigonometry test, then the school is hardly at fault. If on the other hand, only 25% of the students pass the state trigonometry exam, then the school has some explaining to do.
Wow,that was intense! In a good way. And it had a Blazing Saddles clip!
I haven’t worked for government, but the picture you have painted is clear, and shocking. I’d be willing to support the vote-for-pay scenario outlined here because I see a similar approach being taken in my industry.
I work at a large non-profit health care system and we (the organization) are subject to payments under a system called HCAHPS, which is a standardized patient survey of hospital inpatients. If patients consistently rank my hospital low in areas such as physician communication, hospital environment, cleanliness, responsiveness and other categories, a not-insignificant portion of the reimbursement or payment is directly forfeited.
The interesting, if not surprising thing is that, while the HCHAPS has been around since about 2002, results were tied to payment in 2012. So guess what happened starting in 2012? Every hospital in the country suddenly became interested in improving their HCAHPS results. The hospitals that are going to survive are implementing processes designed to improve safety, outcomes and patient experience.
So this lengthy response indicates to me that your idea could very well work. It’s the Hawthorne Principle in action.
I love it, Mr. G. With the proper incentives in place, we could get a lot more out of our bureaucrats than we do now. New York City discovered this in the mid-90s with crime. By doing two simple things, holding precinct commanders responsible for spikes in crime and going after petty crimes (turnstile jumping, public urination, graffiti, etc.), New York City’s crime rate dropped dramatically. Yes, the Hawthorne Principle lives. Thanks for stopping by, my friend.
I’m a libertarian and honestly the daily schedule you shared doesn’t surprise me one bit! But I’ve become more and more cynical. One thing I have seen work out well is awarding government contracts to private companies. It at least creates some competition and if you layer in performance/incentive metrics it prevents slacking off. But that’s easier said than done and not practical (or desirable) for all government functions.
Agreed, DC. Very tough problem. In general, contracting out government functions to private firms does improve productivity. The private contractors I supervised during my inspector days worked much harder than we did. Also, when the economy suffers a downturn, government can reduce expenses without laying off bureaucrats. For instance, the $1 million usually spent on the asphalt contract annually could be dropped to $500K.
Very interesting. Thanks for the expose. I knew the road crew weren’t working that hard. Why does it take forever to fill a pot hole?
Voting for pay would be great! Is that realistic? Corruption is a fact of life everywhere. Probably a lot worse in other countries… This is pretty mild.
So true, Joe. I think the only thing that saves us is that most of the world is even more corrupt than us. Check out this YouTube clip I recently discovered about Dubai.
Slaves of Dubai
This is so amazing to read because I’m surrounded by techs, nurses, and docs who work their butts off all day every day and come in early and stay late to do it. Plus, in Phoenix, our construction crews get stuff done quickly and (seemingly) well. I’m very grateful that projects here are completed in months while they seem to take decades in Houston and in Kansas.
Your stories read like fiction, though sadly I know they’re true. Your system seems like a good solution, but how is the voting public to know that it isn’t being served well so it can vote accurately?
Hey, Julie. You ask a very important question. It’s very hard for the voting public to know how well they’re being served by the government. These obstacles are somewhat lower at the local level, but are still difficult to surmount. Initially, taxpayers would have to go by anecdotal evidence and limited personal experience. Are the common areas being maintained? Are potholes being repaired in a timely fashion? Are public servants courteous and responsive? Hopefully, in the long run, citizen-journalists would start popping up to blog about the state of local government. They could get into such minutiae as debt, pensions, contracts, and honest graft. They could also start posting video clips of government employees goofing off or being rude. So, yes, getting informed about local government in order to cast an informed vote would be hard. But not nearly as hard as it would have been a generation ago (thank you internet, WordPress, and smartphones).
I agree with what seems to be the majority of comments so far that the linking of pay and benefits between management and workers is a good idea. But the voting would be problematic not so much because of the system (assuming a vote-from-your-home-computer or phone could be implemented) but because in my opinion, a large segment of the population doesn’t know what their local government is doing and doesn’t bother to vote. In fact I didn’t *really* know what my local government was doing until I retired and began watching the town meetings on cable. And what I’ve learned is that my town is probably not so different from yours.
Absolutely, Gary. I couldn’t agree with you more. Voter/taxpayer ignorance is the best protection our politicians have. And that ignorance is very difficult to overcome. But every once in a while I have a compelling need to tilt at windmills. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Always like hearing your lucid and well-reasoned thoughts.
Phew, that was a lot to digest!
It’s so unfortunate, but I think there will always be sloth and phony baloney. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve the system where we can. Proposals like yours are good starting points. I think government workers should be held accountable, with compensation being tied in part to performance. I also agree with term limits.
Incredible what really goes on behind the scenes. Thanks for sharing Mr. G!
It is scary what goes on behind the scenes. I’ve always said that it wasn’t the illegal stuff that screwed the taxpayers, it was the legal stuff. It wasn’t against the law to work 2 or 3 hours a day, but that degree of sloth cost way more than whatever money the politicians stole. Thanks for stopping by, Amy. It’s always a pleasure hearing from you.
Agh, this is a toughie. It’s hard to overhaul voting systems when politicians are in charge of passing items that would remove their job security. 😉 As it is now, the best way to see significant change in your world is to participate on the local government level–and that includes overhauling it.
Agreed, Mrs. PP. It’s so frustrating. Reforms are just about impossible to enact, and even if they are, our slippery politicians have proved to be very adept at finding a way around them. Sigh. There are really only two feasible defenses against honest graft. One, as you pointed out, is to get deeply involved in government at the local level. The second is to limit the amount of money the government at all levels can legally confiscate from the citizenry. My belief is that this limit should be 15%. If the politicians in Washington and all the state capitals can’t solve all our problems with that level of taxation, our problems don’t get solved. Too bad. Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. PP. You always have something thoughtful to share.
Fabulous insight. Thanks for a look behind the scenes! I can’t remember what podcast it was (maybe a Tim Ferris one?) but I remember them talking about the foundation of the working class and how things went from paying for the project to paying for the time it takes to do the project. “I’ll pay you by the hour” makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE when it comes to physical work. The job will take as long as you want it to take…apparently in the case of your crew that meant 8 hours give or take the gathering of tools, driving to and from the site, and a few meal breaks. 😉
Here’s one for you Miss M. A contractor who won our concrete contract in the early 90s bid $1 a linear foot for curbing and $16 a square foot for sidewalk. Those are crazy bid prices. Curbing cost a lot more than $1/lf and sidewalk cost a lot less than $16/sf. So in a world were management cared about the taxpayers, management would load up the contractor with a lot of curbing work orders. It would be a great deal for the taxpayers. Fat chance. Management instead loaded up on the sidewalk work orders. The contractor made a killing. I guess he bought a lot of tickets to Republican Party fundraisers during that contract.
“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat deprived of on-the-clock leisure.” This gave me some serious giggles – thank you. 🙂 . Last weekend when the fam and I were inhaling old episodes of Early Edition on the Decades binge weekend, we watched an episode where the main character, Gary, took a job as a city council member in order to do right by local citizens. It wasn’t long before he fell head first into the trap of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” roadblocks that were preventing him from doing right by the people. Being it’s a TV series, good ol’ Gary found a way to get what his citizens needed (a stoplight at a dangerous corner)and get the hell out of there by the end of the episode, but in real life it’s not nearly that easy.
Years ago the local politicians asked me to run for state rep. After much prayer, I decided that there was no way I was going into that game. Yuck. I don’t regret my decision one bit.
On another note, when I show this to Rick he’ll be thrilled to know he’s right about the work ethics of at least one city crew. 🙂
Hey, Laurie. I’m so glad you didn’t run for state rep. You’re much too honorable for politics. Yeah, things were pretty pathetic in my little corner of government. And they were really pathetic when I first started in 1986. In those days, there was no random drug or alcohol testing, and every day the road crews would begin their days by heading to 7-11 for a six pack!
Ugh, that makes me cringe! I can’t even function properly after a sugar overload. I can’t imagine trying to work with alcohol in one’s system. 🙂
Haha! Agreed. Even in my drinking days the thought of having a beer at 7 am made me nauseated.
We know friends that are elected into our local commissions, it basically is just high school drama & cliques for adults.
Most have good intentions of doing positive changes, but, you soon get labeled into one camp or another depending on who your friends are outside of the meetings & (to an extent) your profession.
We had a family friend run for state rep too a few years back & the campaign wasn’t pretty. It was a big decision they prayed about too. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he’s glad he didn’t get elected.
Hey, Josh. I hear ya. I love politics, but I couldn’t stand being a politician. I just hate lying to people. And if I became a politician, I would have to get very comfortable with lying. “No, Mrs. Delusional Parent. Your Johnny is doing poor in school because the schools suck. It’s not because Johnny is a dolt.” If we had term limits, I would encourage more people to give politics a shot. But under our current system, I can’t. It forces good people to sell their souls. Sigh.
I like the premise. I think connecting compensation to results incentivizes working to achieve better results. I would apply that same logic to the public and private sectors.
Your first paragraph is definitely true of both the public and the private sector. There’s no reason to think that any given individual will treat the taxpayer’s money, the company’s money, or the client’s money as their own. In my experience, most people traveling on the company or client’s dime will spend more on flights and hotels than they would have on their own. (That said, I haven’t experienced anything – public or private – on the level of your story of employee sloth.)
I like linking benefits between upper level and lower level workers. I like having the highest and lowest salaries linked, too. (Again, this could work well in the private sector, too, where c-suite pay has skyrocketed while worker pay has been stagnant for decades.) I like the concept of linking pay to results, but I am hesitant to sign on to voting as the mechanism for that.
I think voting tends to reward the appearance of results rather than actual results. It would result in campaigning to show off what you’ve done and it would incentivize short-term cosmetic fixes rather than longer-term deep fixes to problems. Plus, it incentivizes sabotage for any employees that may hate their boss. If you know that your boss’s pay depends entirely on how you do your job, that introduces a whole new set of incentives and I don’t really know where that would ultimately go.
I think if the target is to link pay to results, we would need to find a more direct way to do that. It gets a lot more into the weeds and would require a different set of standards for each position (or maybe an independent panel of pay judges or something?) but I think it would be worth taking that extra step rather than going with a broad voting scheme.
Haha! I love the way your mind works, Matt. I’ve been thinking about c-suite pay as well. And I would love to give board members and shareholders this option. They could choose a 35% corporate tax or a 0% corporate tax. If they choose the 0% corporate tax, they wouldn’t be able to compensate the CEO more than 30 times the compensation of the lowest paid full-time corporate employee. So if the lowest paid corporate employee received a total compensation package of $40K (salary + benefits), the CEO’s total compensation couldn’t exceed $1.2 million. Also, if the board decided to go with the 0% corporate tax, it would be required to pay out at least a 5% dividend to the shareholders. My guess is that a lot of shareholders and boards would prefer 0% corporate taxes and 5% dividends to 35% corporate taxes and CEO pay that is 300 times more than the average worker’s pay. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. I always appreciate your thoughts. Cheers.
Some of the best, hardest working people I personally know and am friends with are employed by our government. The opposite is also true. The laziest people I personally know also hold government positions.
That’s said, I like your proposal. Pay for performance worked for Henry Ford, it works in the private sector, and it could work for government as well.
Personally I’d not take a job where 50% of my pay was in the hands of the masses. I like the idea, but the % seems a bit high. Another thought came to mind; couldn’t the fat cats increase their own max salary simply by raising the salary of the bottom rung? Five times $40,000 > 5 x $30k.
Good, thoughtful post Mr. G! I too get fed up with the US Government at times but there still isn’t another place I’d rather live (and I’m one that has actually lived outside of North America for several years already).
Looking forward to reading the comment section on this one. 😁
Hey, Ty. So true about government fielding some of the best workers and some of the laziest workers. I’ll never forget this one equipment operator that worked for my municipality–Rich was his name. Every piece of equipment he touched, whether it was a backhoe or a dump truck, was like an extension of his body. The man was an artist. I only got the chance to work with him one time during a snow storm. One of my operators was out sick so Rich was assigned to my crew. Our streets were never plowed so well. But sadly, Rich was the exception. For every Rich, there were 10 or more guys who could sit in a truck all day reading a hunting magazine and slurping coffee. Meh.
I like the idea that the politicians have to have the same supplemental benefits as workers, and that their max pay is tied to the worker schedule, and that we’re capping their numbers based on the size of the workforce (though that could actually inflate their numbers.)
But I think your voting scheme is unwieldy at best (we’re controlling the salary of the policy makers, but not the supervisors who have more control over day to day ops.)
I still think term limits is probably one of the best ways to address the issue.
Unwieldy, yes. I thought his entire post was unwieldy!
(He lies like a rug about me not reading it. I spent an hour and a half with him this morning pulling teeth on edits, so a normal person like me could follow along.)
Et tu, Mrs. Groovy? First Emily and now you? I’m sleeping with one eye open tonight.
Hey, Emily. The supervisors or commissioners who ran my municipality were appointed by the politicians. And believe me, they were every bit as political as the politicians who appointed them. In fact, every commissioner was either the head of a local Republican Party club or very influential in a local Republican Party club. Attacking the pay of politicians and commissioners is the only way to get a handle on the culture of sloth and culture of tribute. But I do agree with you on your unwieldy point. Giving the taxpayers the power to withhold pay from management may not be feasible.
First off, I love Blazing Saddles 🙂
Second, your proposal is similar to how a lot of companies do it with bonuses. If I don’t perform well, I don’t get a bonus. I agree with you it should be similar for some in politics.
One thing that would be tough to do is have a vote from the people to determine the bonus. In an ideal world, it would be good, practically speaking, it might be tough.
Once the government catches up with technology, hopefully we will start seeing better things… who knows though.
Thanks for sharing – Erik
“He rode a blazing saddle, he wore a shining star.”
Agreed, Erik. Having the taxpayers vote on bonus money would be tough. But this is mainly because of the voting logistics. Having regular voting for this idea with polls and ballots would be costly and time consuming. But if we can come up with an effective voting app, I think my idea could work. And I say this because of all the levels of government, taxpayers know their local government best. For example, I don’t know what the heck is going on in my neighborhood public schools. Nor do I know what is going on in Raleigh, our state capital. But I do know the condition of our local roads and parks. And I do know if my garbage is picked up every Thursday. In other words, it’s easier for me to gauge the quality of my local government than any other government my taxes support.