Newly elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown was on the teevees over the weekend and got ridiculous, then smacked down by large federal employees union:Barbara Walters: President Obama has asked for a spending freeze on almost everything except matters like the military, Social Security, and Medicare. He says he's going line by line through the budget. Now, you have said that's not enough for you; that you want to cut spending and not just freeze it. So what are the first 3 items that you would cut?Brown: The problem with what the president said is he's not doing it until 2011. We need to do it immediately. We need to put a freeze on federal hires and federal raises because, as you know, federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts.
Let's look at two things: One, is he right? Nope. If you actually look at average salaries between occupations on both sides, you see that they're pretty comparable. Even the graph above, which shows average civilian government employee versus private sector pay, isn't perfect because it forgets that many government workers have high levels of education -- 51 percent have a college degree, and 20 percent have another professional degree or doctorate -- which naturally leads to higher wages in comparison to the entire private sector. And if you look at economic analysis, you'll find that government workers are underpaid, making it "increasingly more difficult to attract and retain high-skill workers." Which is one reason why bankers are running circles around our regulatory agencies.
Two, is he serious about deficit reduction? Nope. Keep in mind that Walters asked him what are the first three items he would cut to reduce the deficit. His answer is to cut federal employee pay, which he clearly knows nothing about -- not to deal with rising health-care costs, not to identify wasteful programs and subsidies, not to invest in economic recovery. This kind of ideological pandering isn't going to solve the budget problem.
-- Tim Fernholz
