I wouldn't exactly blame the smart guy.... he does pay into the system... be it with his tax paying and blood, sweat, tears and sometimes body parts.
And if you get some illnesses and receive SSD for more than a year, they take away your govt. insurance and make you take medicare and you end up paying $104 a month out of your disability for your health insurance.
Yeah its not much, but it is a tenth of your SSD (in some cases)... and for those who can't work and spent over 25 years in the system, i'd say it is a good trade out. If I had my druthers.... i'd still be in...but they only let you stay so long... even sick I can still outwork any of them youngens....LOL, I would have worked up until I reached retirement age if they would have let me... and they would have paid less money for me than when I came back and did the same job as a contractor.( I worked in the same shop for 7 years after I got out)

P.S. Don't try to die.... they give you less and take more back.  

Like I said, I don't blame the smart guy at all, he's just being smart

who is actually responsible for the path being open?
clue: it's NOT the smart guy

I don't know what %, JOG
I'm sure the number of Gov't jobs, and the economic strain, of Gov't workers pales in comparison to the number of the institutional welfare cases, though
And exactly how does a gov't work with NO gov't workers?
no one will do the job if it doesn't pay
And Gov't does serve a purpose, though we could darn sure use less of it

I think most of the vitriol over gov't jobs is directed at the more bureaucratic type workers who often generate waste
a water utility provides a service, cleaning up polluted water so it's safe to drink
people forget these types of jobs when they start grumbling over gov't workers
As much as I'd like less gov't interference in my life, some of the things the gov't does I'm not sure I'd trust private industry with

I do work for Cities, Counties and occasionally the State.   We all work pretty hard....but sometimes it doesn't look that way!

One project involved a new roadway through a flood wall on the Ohio River.  The new road required new traffic lights to be set, and it was going to require new poles in the public Right of Way along the street.  The new poles would require large concrete bases to be placed in the ground.

We had a meeting on the site to discuss what needed to be done.  Since the construction involved digging large holes along the edge of the road for the concrete base, and since the intersection was loaded with above and underground utilities.....the meeting included me as the Design Engineer, the City Public Works Director, a couple of fellows from the Department of Transportation, a couple of guys from the Electrical Contractors who would be wiring the new lights and running the underground electric, a couple of folks each from the Electric Utility, gas utility, water utility and sanitation district.  I think there were about a dozen of us standing around at this intersection looking around and discussing what needed to be done to make this project work.

A lady pulled up in a car and stopped, looked at us....looked at the traffic light, rolled down her window....and said to us:  "Look....it is just a traffic light - we have them all over town!".....then she drove off.   It did look a bit weird to have so many folks just standing around looking at things - but we all had to be there!

Dave, I know EXACTLY what you mean, I've been in that same position. My last job, is when I started with my municipality, was collection system maintenance, essentially repairing sewer pipes and manholes. It was a regular thing for 1 guy to be in the hole uncovering the pipe, and 3 others (4 if the supervisor showed up to check on us) would be standing around watching him.

********** WARNING: ON COMING RANT **********

1. It's a safety hazard to have more than one guy in the hole digging, often times you would only need one guy to uncover the pipe, 2 guys would bump into each other when trying to work. A lot of the time, if we were ALL standing around, it's because we were taking a break, I mean, we could keep working and pass out from heat exhaustion...it wouldn't matter to us, we'd still be getting paid by the hour and on the job injury we wouldn't have to pay the medical bills out of our pocket...I may be exaggerating, but I mean really, what's cheaper, a 15 minute break for a crew, or someone ending up in the hospital? You get the idea.

2. Usually we would have 1 Crew leader, 1 Equipment Operator, 1 Dump truck driver, 1 "worker" (that's what I was for a while). Having said that, all of the above did a little part when it came to the physical part of the work, the hand digging part in our case. But in order to knock jobs out in one day, you needed an extra guy for dump truck so he could run to dump and bring material as necessary, an operator to operate the equipment while the dump truck was out, he could continue to excavate. The crew leader and worker would "spot" for anything that the operator may not be able to see while he was digging. So you look at it that way, and it makes sense. It wasn't uncommon for crews to be short the "worker" guy making it a 3 man crew. You could not perform jobs with anything less than a 3 man crew. For safety purposes of course.

3. Contractor who the municipality would hire, would probably charge us 3X what it cost the municipality to just do it in house. The contractor would then have a bunch of guys "just standing around" and the tax payers (or customers) would end up paying for it anyways. The only difference is, instead of a City Seal, they have a company logo so people don't pay as much attention to it.

4. I make a substantial amount less than a friend of mine who is my age does working for a construction company does. I'm guessing, he probably makes 3-4 bucks more an hour than I do, plus, it's not uncommon for him to get 60+ hours a week. We normally would make a little bit of O.T., but nothing like private sector has to offer.

I remember a job I got called in for once. One of our 3 man crews was working on it (and keep in mind, we did contract out a lot of jobs that we didn't have the proper equipment to work on, we did a lot of "small" jobs, but the bigger, massive construction jobs, the municipality would contract out) and it ended up being more than they could manage, the contractor came in to do it and most of it had already been excavated by our crew, but the contractor had like 8-10 guys show up. 2 guys to unload a pump, 4 guys who looked like "workers", 2 guys looked like crew leaders or something, and an engineer or supervisor looking guy. A bunch of them were "just standing around" for the remainder of time I was on site and I wondered "Man, how much are these guys gonna charge us?" I can't even imagine, but I doubt they got any dirty looks from the public.  

********** END OF RANT **********

Also, I do live within the service area of the municipality, so you could say I "waste" my own money!  

ToesNose wrote on 04/12/15 at 04:09:20:



----------------------------------------------------

When I looked it up, it seemed we owe most of the money to ourselves.

This source is a bit dated, but for your viewing pleasure.... :

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/12/chart-who-does-the-u-s-govt-owe-17...