IMHO, one of the important necessary advances surely has to involve doing away with this whole "manifest destiny", exceptionalist sh1t. I think it's been pretty conclusively demonstrated that it's not good for the American psyche. Just my Z$2c...
Government has been cutting payrolls quite significantly. Those who are left, in theory the most essential (I know, I know) will need their wages to keep up with competing postiions in the private sector, or we lose their expertise. And no, they are not "all" parasites. The basic problem is that laying off government workers, cutting government spending, is basically taking big customers out of the marketplace, which is precisely the problem of recessions--the actors leave the marketplace. You can't just go nuts with an axe and expect a tidy result, the world is too complex for that. Moderation is key. Eliminate waste where you find it. Moderate spending. Moderate taxation. And let the whining rich fend for themselves, in fact, make them stfu. If I can get out of bed in the morning, so can they. My ideas are not a prescription for unlimited government expansion, that's the opposite of "power to the workers", isn't it?
LOL, tell me exactly who in the public sector is going to flock to the private sector and lower wages if we dont pay them enough? The most useless people in the world flock the the public sector, because they have high wages and they rarely get fired, there isnt an exponential upside potential like in the private sector, but they are happy getting their increases every year which drastically ooutpace those seen by the below average worker in the private sector, and they have no ambition to compete, especially because they lack the skills to compete. If we indeed were weeding the bad people out of government, why is it that unions like the teachers union held on to people based on Tenure? Why is it that public sector unions all over the country chose to take pay raises and lay people off as opposed to keeping everyone on and reducing their salaries, or even leaving their salaries flat in some cases? You really think these public sector unions are out for the good of the people? They are the epitome of laziness and greed, they are only in it for themselves, but they dont want to put in the effort to get there.
There you go again, calling it a tax raise when its taking back the tax break that was siphoned along like a drug dealers mule. How does the blackmail card always fall to reps? Not checkmate yet but again, its "check" and mate in X many moves.
Lots of people leave government when a better compensating private sector position becomes available. That this is no longer common is more a statement about the private sector than the public one. But assuming public sector wages are so high, and their "tenure" is so assured, wouldn't competition for those jobs naturally be greater? If so, it follows that the best of us are also competing for those jobs, not just the most useless. It is true I'll admit, that once "in", poor government workers do not have the exposure that poor private sector workers do. Maybe a stronger, more attractive private sector would change that balance?
Because Private sector employees work in the private sector based on the ability to move up, and the chance that if you work real hard, you will be rewarded. Where as the majority of parasites in the government choose the government based on the ability to do nothing and permanently maintain their job. If not for tenure/greedy unions, How do you explain the fact that we spend the most in the world per student on education and our results are terrible?
How do you explain the discrepancy in the cost of privately run schools, and the results of privately run schools as opposed to publicly run schools? The government is not held to any standard whatsoever where as private/charter schools that dont get results lose funding, again its competition. <object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/W0lnTmEAvYo?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W0lnTmEAvYo?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>
Those are great reasons for everyone, except the most entrepreneurial among us, to be competing for government jobs. And if they are, then it follows that the best will be winning, one way or another, out over the useless. That's human nature. I've worked for three governments myself (one US federal, one state, and one provincial) and I have not seen the degree of "uselessness" you are asserting. I worked and I worked hard. Now, when I've worked for a union, yes, uselessness aka dead wood is more common there.