Post by A***@gmail.comPost by McGyverPost by A***@gmail.comYou may know that in Africa, election time is the time to masacre
the other party's supporters. And it's simply rational, because
the motive is to get access to the astronomical [compared
to those who are excluded] remuneration that government
employees get.
Clearly if these remunerations [and government contracts]
where determined by the free market, there'd be no motive
for the repeated civil wars that this causes.
How does the 1st world avoid this problem?
PS. I call them civil-servants, but they are actually looters.
The pay rates and work rules are determined by an agency which is
often called the Civil Service Commission or a similar name.
Unions often negotiate contracts with the agency on behalf of the
workers.
McGyver
Many would say that the US clearly does NOT avoid this problem,
which is evident by the massive resources diverted into capturing
an opportunity to 'get your snaught into the feeding trough'.
But that THERE is at least a mechanism to regularly alternate
the feeding time between herds.
Unfortunately this is not a legal question.
Although it's vital for [some] legislators to understand
how economics works. I guess they have special committees?
But saying "The pay rates and work rules are determined by
the Civil Service Commission", doesn't explain the mechanism
of how the 'gasoline causes the vehicle to climb the hill'.
The mechanism of how supply and demand via open
competition prevent looting, is really quiet easy to understand.
There MUST be a mechanism for the tax payers to restrict the
amount of money they have to pay civil servants, as there is the
inevitable force from the civil servants to get as much as possible.
BTW I can't discuss this on the 'economics' forum because it's
gone beserk.
Your most recent comments seem to indicate that your criticism is
directed at the pay of elected people. My comments have dealt only
with all other members of government, the vast majority of government
employees, the unelected appointees and the employees of the agencies
hired in the traditional ways. My answers have nothing to do with the
pay of elected people. The following continues that focus. If your
question concerns the pay of elected people, please ask another
question and we'll start over.
The U.S. Civil Service Commission and its successor agencies, the
Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board,
have generally done a good job of limiting the pay of the employees of
the government other than elected people, in my opinion. The
commissions act like employers. They negotiate hard. They pay as much
as necessary and not more, generally speaking. The control mechanism, I
suppose, is the election process. Elected people appoint the members
of the boards. The elected people worry about re-election. It seems
to me that this leads to two objectives: to preserve the right to brag
about their success in controlling government labor costs and to
prevent any future opponents from gaining ground with revelations about
labor cost excesses.
McGyver