While our business people struggle to keep their doors open and retain employees to offer goods and services that provide us with a high “quality of life,” government jobs give subsidized security for many and remove wealth from our economy. Hundreds of billions of federal “stimulus” money has been off-loaded on the states’ political class eager to bail themselves out of their profligate spending on bigger government with more employees. Now it’s time for reality checks. Citizens rightly demand that irresponsible actions during the past few years must be curtailed and spending brought back to more reasonable levels.
Our current North Carolina legislators, sent to Raleigh by fed-up voters, try to right the foundering ship-of-state by trimming back the overblown spending sails. Statist “stakeholders” in Big Government practice their “education.” demagogy with fear-tactics and irrationality. Recently, the Wilmington StarNews “editorial board” wailed about “Draconian cuts proposed,” and a budget that “deals a crippling blow to public education.”
Editors claim that this would be a “real job killer.” Yet there’s no evidence that budget paring will necessarily result in many teachers or teacher assistants (“13,000”) losing their jobs. Legislators tell us that most of the public education “suffering” likely will be losing some administrators (good riddance), normal attrition and unfilled vacant positions. Even some high school students could point out low priority spending in every public school system that could be eliminated or reduced. Editors also tell us that Senate Republican “stinginess” will send “a lot of other state workers to the unemployment line”—necessary, but not likely.
Editors don’t cite specifics to justify more public education jobs. Instead they make some vague, uninformed comments: “Education is the key to attracting businesses” (taxes and regulations are more important) and North Carolina “ranks 46th in per-pupil spending” (spending has diminishing returns and is less important than cultural factors).
Meanwhile local officials take pride in keeping public employment high. Government agencies solicit employees. For example, WAVE Transit does its part to offer attractive wages and unreasonably generous personal benefits to add more government jobs.
If you want “competitive wages,” with group health insurance (including dental), sick leave, paid vacation, holiday pay, 401k and/or “North Carolina Local Government Employee Retirement System, uniforms and “Employee Assistance Program”(whatever that is) benefits you can send an application and/or resume via email or Fax (WAVE will accept resumes without an application for administrative positions).
Oh, and you can choose your own language from a list of over 50: Afrikaans to Yiddish.
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02
2011 At 6:40 am, kingwt Said:
“crippling blow to public education”
Deal. Have you seen the quality of education that students are getting? Not to mention that all of schooling is geared towards, well, more schooling. We need to teach people how to be entrepreneurs and business leaders. Not followers in a corporate world.