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Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Who works tfor whom? By Richard L. Lesher, Pres., Chamber of Commerce of the United States Mr. Jones makes more money each year than you do 35 percent more. While you must wait until age 65 to retire with full pension benefits, Mr. Jones can retire with full benefits under his system 10 years earlier, at 55. And another thing. Mr. Jones' pension will be 56 percent of his pretax salary yours, most likely, will be only 30 percent. His office is larger than yours. It is almost impossible impossi-ble to fire Mr. Jones and he isn't the least bit afraid of losing his job because of the recession or foreign competition. Oh, and one last thing. Mr. Jones would like to thank you for paying his salary . -and his handsome pension plan. That's right. Mr. Jones works for the federal government. He's a bureaucrat. And before you can begin to pay the rent, put food on the table, or make the car , payments. Uncle Sam withholds enough of our money to pay Mr. Jones. Actually you and your neighbors finance the high salaries and unbeatable pensions of 2.853.863 Mr. Jones. That is how manv federal bureaucrats the taxpayers must support these days. (And that number excludes military personnel.) You may be a little annoyed, with things so tight, that your family budget is paying the salaries of bureaucrats who make more money than you do. Well, there's more. The pensions paid out to retired federal employees are indexed to rise with inflation. Only half of the workers in the private sector have any pension at all. and for those who don. only on-ly three percent are indexed to inflation. The federal government's pension plan is so generous that more than 100,000 retired bureaucrats are now getting more money in their retirement checks than they ever made while working. It helps, of course, that the federal government's govern-ment's contribution to the bureaucrats' retirement system represents 33 percent of payroll, compared to an average of 17 percent contribution by employers in the private sector. Now, let's make one thing clear. Private employers are not pinching pennies pen-nies when they fail to match the generous pay and pensions granted federal employees. They have to earn even- : nickle of employee pay and pension : benefits by selling products or services. The federal government simply reaches out into the taxpayers' pockets "and takes what it needs. , With all those nice salaries and pen-sions pen-sions it should be no surprise that the : Washington, D.C. area has a higher pro portion of households earning morethan $50,000 per year than any other city in the country. And while the rest of the country is shelling out over $61 billion to pay' for civilian federal employees excluding postal workers who average more than S22.000 a year and an additional S21 billion for pension and disabii'j payments, there is even more to look ior-ward ior-ward to: a half-trillion dollar unfunded liability for the Civil Service Retirement System. After paying your federal income tas this year and considering the inordinate federal salaries and pensions that your taxes pay for, you may wonder about these civil servants. Do they work for us. or do we work for them? |