<p>Today, the topic is government jobs. I'll start with a few links.</p>
<p>First, from <a href="http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/03/crowding-out-in-pictures.html">Carpe Diem</a>, follow the link to see a few interesting graphs showing the increase in federal government jobs. Since mid-2007, the number has increased five-fold.</p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-12-10-federal-pay-salaries_N.htm">USA Today </a>article from last year mentions, those jobs are really paying the bills:</p>
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<p>Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months &mdash; and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nice work if you voted for the party in power right now.</p>
<p>From the <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/12268">Mackinac Center for Public Policy</a>, discusses the negotiated 3% increase of union State of Michigan workers, and how the legislature has just over a month to rescind that raise. Let's be serious, there will be no renegotiation - such a change would require a two-thirds majority, an impossibility in a union-dominated state like ours.</p>
<p>Continuing with the theme of teachers is a link from the <a href="http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20100305/CLINTON01/3070301/1002/NEWS01">Lansing State Journal</a>, which I found from another <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/12273">Mackinac Center </a>article:</p>
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<p>At a time when local teachers' unions are struggling to maintain salary and benefits and the union's overall statewide membership is declining, many MEA negotiators and executive director Luigi Battaglieri also got hefty pay increases. And average pay for all employees at the MEA has risen 19 percent in recent years.</p>
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<p>But it's all in the name of doing the best job they can do says Doug Pratt, MEA director of communications:</p>
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<p>&quot;Do we compensate our officers well? Do we compensate our managers well? Yes,&quot; he said. &quot;We believe in attracting and recruiting the best possible candidates.&quot;</p>
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<p>I wonder what Mr. Pratt thinks of the bonuses received by AIG and other financial firms that caused such an uproar last year. They were just trying to attract and keep the best people they could, too.</p>
<p>And just like the federal workers, it pays to work for the MEA:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Overall, MEA salary expenses are increasing. For the 2005-06 fiscal year, the average salary for each of the 346 MEA employees was $75,308. By 2008-09, 343 employees earned an average of $89,612 each - an increase of nearly 19 percent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm in the wrong business. I often pass the MEA office on Saginaw Street in East Lansing. Perhaps I need to stop by, pretend I'm a liberal, and squeeze taxpayer dollars out of teachers like their union reps do. It obviously pays to do so.<br />
&nbsp;</p>