Carry That Weight

One of the central problems of having a professional political class is that we have life-long public servants voting on and controlling the compensation of all the other life-long public employees; in effect people who produce no tax revenue voting on how much those that do need to pay to adequately compensate themselves.* Is it any wonder they overlook their collective failings in reforming our troubled institutions? Is it any wonder that they believe in higher taxes? When you have a group of people whose individual financial futures depends on increasing every person in their group's compensation, how can the group evolve into anything but a mutual admiration society. After all, if Susie's chance of getting a raise is just as likely if Joe does a great job as if she does, why not commend Joe's performance? Plus, by commending Joe instead of yourself ( you're Susie ), you have the added benefit of appearing selfless and caring. 'You do such a great job! No you do such a great job! No you ....' In the twisted psychology of the collective, 'I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Koo Koo Kachoo'. ( But how does that make us walruses? Although they do 'Carry that Weight.' )

It took me years to figure out why school teachers never speak ill of one another's abilities; at least to outside parties. With them, everybody's always doing a great job. After all, the better 'we' do, the easier it is for me to justify 'my' raise this year. And what good is it to criticize substandard performance if you can't get rid of them anyway?** Why take the risk of unnecessarily creating an enemy? Just where are those bad teachers flunking half their classes? Obviously, in somebody else's school. Not just to pick on teachers, the same would hold true for any and all union dominated professions. Isn't it entirely possible, if not likely, that the impossibility of truly standing out and being rewarded individually within public service psychologically discourages those with more intelligence and ambition, aka 'the best and the brightest', from entering those fields? What's sadder is that when mediocrity surrounds itself with mediocrity - the incompetent don't know they're incompetent.

When almost everybody's doing a great job, almost nobody's doing a great job.

*It makes no sense to say people pay taxes when their compensation, benefits and retirement packages far exceeds any realistic return on their withholdings. Similarly it makes no sense to say a federal employee pays federal taxes as the withholdings are simply returned to the payer. I suppose it could be argued that higher earners who work for state government pay some federal taxes.

** In the private sector the incentive is just the opposite. A peer's underperformance lessens the probability that a higher performer will get a raise. The more money the business makes the more likely the top producers will do well.

M.D.T.