Stein: Bureaucrats Are Great, So Lay Off

(CBS)  CBS Sunday Morning Contributor Ben Stein on why we should be just a little more grateful for the people who work in government ...


There is a basic assumption among many of us conservatives that bothers me. Basically, the assumption is that if a person is a government employee, then he or she is lazy and shiftless, a parasite just eating up tax dollars without doing anything.

"Bureaucrats" is what the sneering expression usually is.

To put it mildly, this is unfair and not even in the ballpark of what's true.

Government employees include cops and firefighters, who do some of the most dangerous, vital work in the society. Government employees include prosecutors and prison guards, who do work that is often extremely difficult and deeply necessary.

Government employees are the doctors and nurses at VA hospitals. They are the teachers who try to teach our kids. They are the men and women who keep track of our economic and health statistics, without which we cannot measure progress or failure.

Government employees are the CIA agents who launch drone strikes to kill terrorists and who sometimes get killed. Bureaucrats would include the people of the FBI and it would also include the men and women at the Pentagon who guide our armed forces. These people are the muscle and bone of the nation.

Long ago, Alben Barkley, Harry Truman's Vice President, keenly said that "a bureaucrat is a Democrat who has a job a Republican wants." I am not sure that's true, but I have been a bureaucrat in my youth and I never worked so hard for so little money in my life, and my fellow employees were in the same galley slave boat.

I am sure there are many government employees who waste money but so are there wasteful private sector people.

Let's take our conservative noses out of the air and stop sneering at the people who serve us in the civil service. We would be awfully sad if they were gone, even the ones in the Department of Motor Vehicles.

[Spirit-76]

I lived and worked in the Washington DC area for 27 years, dealing with government employees in both Defense and government agencies.
Yes, there all a lot of free-loaders that work for these organizations, when you see some of them take advantage of their positions it is sicking...
But it is no different that most other organization and companies in America. It is known as the Bell Curve:
Acheivers 25%
Workers 50%
Worthless 25%
If one could train & movtivate this group to the level of the workers many of us would feel we are getting our moneys worth.. don't hold your breath...

[b_wtaylor]

Ben Stein is so right. I worked for the Department of Defense, 2 state departments of revenue, and the IRS, thinking it would be so much better in the private sector. So I got high level positions at Wachovia, Blue Cross, and a top-rated internet software design company. What a shock! These corporate giants of the private sector wasted tens of millions of dollars in snap decisions made absolutely without thought, as if money were just so much confetti. No one was accountable for anything except his golf scores and kissing up. Screw up and go up was not just a joke; it was the standard. Cronyism trumped competence, not occassionally, but as the norm. Not only did no one think of the customer, no one thought of the company or the profit line, either. Most corporate executives and professionals would have been fired as low level government employees. On the other hand, the government employees I worked with were, for the vast majority, highly competent, dedicated to service, and working under crushingly tight budget constraints with far more responsibility that private sector execs who made 3 times the salary with far better benefits and many perks. Most government employees work where they are because they want to serve and they give you far, far, far more for your money than your local banker or insurance rep or internet designer. I know. I spent a 40-year career in plenty of both places, i.e government and the corporate world. The corporations managment are incompetent and their me-me-me behavior is disgraceful. Why? Because they can be. They don't have all the rules and checks and balances and laws to prohibit idiocy, greed, and graft that government has on its employees. Don't believe me? Then think about how many of these well-paid fools we tax payers have had to bail out this past year and a half.

[noloyalisti]

We have to all, millions of us, unite against the REAL enemy of the people, the rich, big American corporations. Their coup is almost complete with the latest Supreme Court ruling making votes equal to dollars. We can't compete with their trillions.

The big corporations have us in 4 more wars (Afgah, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine) and run the government with their rich lobbyists.

[aelfheld]

So we're supposed to grovel before our new overlords because a self-absorbed sometime actor can't tell the difference between a policeman and a desk-bound paper-pusher?

It's not that we need to "take our conservative noses out of the air" but rather that Mr Stein needs to remove his head from the inappropriate location he has placed it.

[payasyougo]

"Stein: Bureaucrats Are Great, So Lay Off"
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Liquidate Pelosi's private jet and crew and use the funds to put about 70 average folks to work.

Take away the free parking, vehicle use and fuel benefit for all of congress and use the funds to put about 4000 average folks to work.

Convert those xmas present federal pensions to 401k w/ matching contributions similar to industry and make them rely on social security as a supplement and SS will be fixed faster than you can say Medicare/Medicaid refinancing.

I don't have beef w/ civil servants or the fact that there is no measure of productivity. It's the exponential growth, the unfunded mandates, the lie and move on and the recent exhibition of complete lack of concern for our founding father's governing document.

[mbburch06]

Just when you think Stein can't get any dumber, he proves you wrong!

Ben, a former bureaucrat him self, can't stand that the fact that those of us in the private (productive) sector of the economy tend to dislike tax-feeding parasites. After all, what would we do without those crucial folks at the DMV? What a joke.

Government employees live off our money. Can't we at least have a laugh at their expense?

[image_by_m]

You are a sorry excuse for a human being.

[Freedomforever88]

I love the buerecratic police that protect my property. No one has taken more property from me then Federal, State and local govt.

[noloyalisti]

Reagan created the largest deficit increase of any President ever.

Reagan created more government debt than all the Presidents before him put together.

He convinced an ever ignorant American people that they didn't need any money to buy stuff, just use credit.

Reagan was the biggest destroyer of labor unions and the Middle Class in our history.

He happened to be around when the Soviet Union collapsed but had virtually nothing to do with it. Reagan also got rid of government regulations that led directly to our current national nightmare.

Quite a legacy, I agree.

[noloyalisti]

The private sector is a failure and a disaster. The Reagan conspiracy of deregulation and destroying labor unions singlehandedly destroyed the middle class and with it the future of America (except for the rich private sector leeches).

Don't blame the government, blame the REAL enemy, the rich, greedy, big corporations. Then we can get somewhere. I recommend Michael Moore's best film: Capitalism, A Love Story.

[bpover1]

Even the socialist Michael Moore thinks Obama is an idiot. He thought his health care bill did not go far enough but hey, Castro liked it and one commie to another, you all should be happy.....

[tecwrite]

Last year the fed/government sold 1.5 TRILLION dollars worth of debt (bonds, bills, etc.)

This year the fed/government HAS TO sell 2.5 TRILLION dollars worth of debt.

Every dollar that is used to purchase government debt is a dollar that CANNOT be invested in the private sector economy.

Do you know someone who is unemployed?

Do you know someone else who retired before the age of 55, with a near full salary pension, full health care coverage, and COLA?s guaranteed for life?

Do you really think the two conditions are unrelated?

Did anyone reading this NOT associate the second condition with government workers?

[bpover1]

You are right on, and these workers and Unions have fleeced the taxpayers for many years. It has come to the surface thanks to Fox and the wall street Journal. The disparity between govt. and private pay scales are staggering while no layoffs for the govt. workers.

[mstanger61]

tecwrite's comment is so ignorant I'm surprised he or she's ever had a job. Every dollar the government spends IS invested in the "private sector economy" (not that there is such a thing). Government spending pays salaries of regular people, not just elected officials. It goes not just to national defense, but also social security and medicare. It also goes to build roads, highways, bridges, etc that are built by private-sector companies. Without those things built without profit, homebuilders and other for-profit companies wouldn't be able to make money.
I've worked in the public sector for 25 years, and I don't know anyone who retired before age 55 with near-full salary pension, full health care coverage or guaranteed COLAs.
If you're angry about your life, don't take it out on someone who doesn't deserve it.

[noloyalisti]

The rich, greedy, big corporations should take a hit. They don't pay as much tax as I do and their executives make more in a day than I make all year.

Yet the workers do all the work and only get terrorized by these big corporations. Enough is enough. Time to recognize the REAL enemy of the people. Hint, it's NOT the government.

[theskeptical1]

It's not just the "rich, greedy big corporations" that are going to take a hit. My brother-in-law manages five franchise fast food restaurants (the guy works ~ 70 hours/week at it) and he says that to cover his additional costs under Obamacare he'll have to increase his prices about 4% across the board. And that 4% will come right out of the pockets of the low/middle income working folks who eat at his places. Those people are also going to take a "hit" for Obamacare, they just don't know it yet.