And you wonder why they don’t understand the real world and economy that the rest of us live in?
Help Wanted, No Private Sector Experience Required
By Nick Schulz
American Enterprise Institute
November 25, 2009A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.
When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15 percent and 19 percent of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet—over 90 percent of its prior experience was in the public sector—is remarkable.
These are the people we are supposed to trust with our health care and creating jobs? So few of them have ever worked in a real job in their entire life!
@B-Rob
It has struck me as a bit odd that you don’t seem to post on the weekends. I also noted that the other day you had to “sign-off”. Was it quitting time? Do you write your posts while at work, or is this your work?
Of course I am making some brash assumptions here but in my world … people that accept a paycheck from an employer while spending their time writing comments on a blog are theives. But then again wealth re-distribution is theft, so if one supports those kind of policies then I imagine stealing from an employer through misuse of time is not a great leap.
During my time at Boeing I had numerous liberal acquaintances that spent an inordinate amount of time surfing the web, writing personal emails, and in general, screwing off. Now I’m not saying that these activities don’t also occur amongst less liberal individuals but, what I found most interesting was their angst over the quantity and frequency of achievement awards that I received (I came to work to work). If they knew what kind of raises I was getting compared to them I’m sure that they would have been appoplectic.
One of the more vocal individuals, and one of the most liberal people I’ve ever met, was a real case study. He was our TOC (theory of constraints) guru. Boeing had spent an appreciable amount of money sending this individual to seminars, and conferences. His job was to champion the implementation of throughput managment in a manufacturing process. He attended all the meetings, made the pre-requisite noise about the value of the program but interestingly when it came time to actually implement the program and oversee the process this individual would become as scarce as hens teeth.
Change involves risk, and when your dealing with changing mult-million dollar processes, there is the risk that even the best processes will be met with resistance and possibly fail, not because the new process is bad but because people don’t like change. One day , while I was discussing his apparent absence when program implementation was in full swing I asked him why, and in a moment of candor he admitted that he did not want to be part of a failed program. This struck me as classical; be a part of the herd, don’t stand out and reap the rewards of those that actually perform while doing as much as possible to not be seen as a cause/part of any potential failure.
Now I’ve kinda been rambling on about the kind of people that, in my experience, the left seems to attract to its ranks, which brings me back to your start-up venture/health care scenerio.
You laid out three scenes
1. The individual made 40,000 and had 10,000 in health care benefits
2. The individual would make 42,000 and have stock options and pay for his own health insurance
3. The individual would make 42,000, have stock options and the public would pay for his health care.
You state:
Where exactly is the risk in getting a 2,000 raise with stock options and publicly funded health care? It seems to me that you are advocating for the reward without any risk. This individual is married and has children. Is he the sole bread winner with a stay at home wife, this would almost be considered an anomolly in to todays world? If the reward, a $2,000 raise plus stock options is worth it then why doesn’t the wife go to work and provide the health insurance through her employer? Sometimes the order of the day is sacrifice in order to have something better in the future. The “instant gratification” generation seems unwilling to sacrifice anything for a future benefit.
If, instead of a public option the Government got the hell out of the way of insurance companies offering policies across state lines and quit requiring mandatory coverage for certain proceedures, it is much more likely that this individual could find a catastophic health care plan with a high deductible (say $2000 to $5000) that was affordable. Competition would keep the price down. The more government gets involved the more they screw things up to the point that they create new programs/regulations attempting to fix the problems that their previous regulations created. Which in turn create more issues that need a new fix, ad infinitum.
I have started several successful businesses over the course of my life and regularly help others start their own business ventures. In order to be in business I have had to take a lot of risks. One does the very best that they can to minimize risk but it is always there. People are taught that in order to be successful they must go to school, get a job. I don’t call that success I call that secure.. and they are only secure for as long as they have their job. The biggest financial crisis that i have faced in my life is when i have relied on the big companies with all the benefits. Unfortunately when they lay people off, they lay of thousands at a time and headcounts and departments get slashed regardless of the quality or quantity of work that the individual does. Over the course of time I have learned that true success is based on the ability to be self reliant. A good job is only the illusion of success for it can be snatched from you at a moments notice.
There was a period a few years back where I was starting a new venture, my wife was working for a contractor to a government contractor. They promised benefits as soon as her security clearance was approved. Bunglers that they were they “lost” the paperwork three times. During that period we had no insurance, she became ill and required a week long hospital stay and major sugery. Total bill came to a bit over $30,000. Contrary to liberal assertions that people are dying because they don’t have insurance, she is now fully recovered. When people ask me about the financial hardship having such a large bill creates I smile and note that a Cadillace costs more than her surgery and the ride isn’t near as good. And then I gladly make my monthly payment to the hospital.
@Donald Bly: You noticed that too hunh Donald? I just figured he gets paid by ACORN or SEIU to spend his work days online dropping the latest George Soros line on us (notice how upset he gets when you mention the name of his master).
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