Durham County’s Board of Commissioners’ decision to give raises ranging from 2.2 to 32 percent shows the special status enjoyed by people working for the government. Commissioners Chairman Michael Page spells out why, in an economic recession when tax revenues are stagnant, commissioners felt this was a good thing to do:
“Many of these are working-class families. How do we continue to not be able to support them in some way?” he said to explain the board’s thinking.
Government employees are indeed fortunate. In the private sector, when things are tight and revenue is down, people get laid off because there is no money to pay them, much less give them raises. In government, you just have to tap the taxpayers.
As Donna Martinez pointed out earlier here, the recently approved sales tax is just the latest example of how government uses taxpayers as the golden goose. Oh, and that regressive tax will hit the laid-off private-sector worker every time he buys a loaf of bread or gallon of milk. But, no matter. The public worker has been amply supported, as Page put it.
The lefty interest groups in Raleigh, and Gov. Bev Perdue, have spent several months decrying the loss of a piddling few government workers, urging tax increases to keep them attached to the public teat. They have shown virtually no concern for the thousands and thousands of private-sector workers who have lost jobs in this economy.
Why is the layoff of a government worker somehow more poignant than the layoff of a private-sector worker? Why should we shed copious tears for the laid off bureaucrat or shovel-leaner working for the state, county, or city, but ignore the vastly larger number of private-sector workers who have lost jobs in the Obama economy?
The left rants about injustice. Well, this is one.
