ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

Government produces nothing. It creates no wealth. Yet the District of Columbia is ranked as the richest area in the nation.
Politicians and bureaucrats shriek that business people are "greedy." But facts show differently. Imagine v****g yourself a raise and millions of dollars in allowances. Imagine 5-figure bonuses. Lifetime pensions to which you contribute only 1.3%. Imagine opening 3 or 4 offices around the state for which you pay not a dime.
Politicians and bureaucrats are diseased with avarice -- and complain with self-righteous indignation when CEOs arrive in private jets for a White House meeting.
D.C. is the richest area in the nation not only because an annual salary of $174,000 is paid to congressional members, 261 of whom are millionaires, not only because most of the appointed cabinet secretaries are multimillionaires, but also because federal employees are paid salaries over three times what the average taxpayer earns.
The source of all that money is taxes levied on production.

Business people -- both employers and employees alike -- produce all of the services and products that provide our as well as politicians and bureaucrats' comfort, health, safety and pleasure. Business people create the nation's prosperity. They are the nation's wealth -- and are regulated by those that produce no economic values whatsoever.
What are the total federal salaries business people are forced to pay those that produce nothing? Here is an estimate.
The executive branch is the most profligate. The White House staff numbers 460 bureaucrats. Their annual salaries vary from a few at $42,000 to hundreds between $75,000 and $174,000, and some as high as or over $200,000.
The executive branch includes the cabinet, which consists of 15 departments. The annual salary of each Secretary is $200,700. The number of bureaucrats comprising cabinet staffs range from 15,000 to 240,000. Annual staff salaries average $100,000. Some are higher. For example, the Department of Homeland Security has a staff of 240,000. Of this number 9,525 are "titled" and paid an average of $133,486 annually. Of the remaining 230,475 bureaucrats, the average annual salary is $120,000. Total DHS salaries is $27,657,000,000.
Adding in the Secret Service, chief executive, vice president and White House staff, the total executive branch numbers 6,546,673 employees that are paid an estimated $549,126,870,330.
The legislative branch has 12,835 employees. The total paid in salaries is $1,568,131,700. A 2009 report stated that 2,043 staffers were paid an average of $168,000 The remainder of 5,787 staffers average $100,000 annually. "Assistance" and allowances for Senate and House members comes to $3,682,468,080. The total for the legislative branch is an estimated $5,250,599,780.
For the judicial branch, the total number of employees is 1,324 and $199,418,700 in salaries. The judicial branch includes the Supreme Court (9), the Courts of Appeal (179), district judges (677), international trade (9) and their staffs (450 -- estimated).
As for agencies, although the actual number remains in dispute 491 is used here because that is the number of agencies -- minus cabinet posts and military services -- shown in a government listing. These 491 agencies employ 5,148,867 individuals. Total annual salaries: $569,886,700,000.
These numbers -- of agencies, employees and salaries -- are hugely underestimated. Many federal agencies subsume dozens of agencies and bureaus that are not listed. The National Institutes of Health, for example, consists of 47 separate bureaucracies, the number of their personnel and salaries unstated.
The number of employees and salaries of some agencies is classified, such as the CIA and the NSA. An example is the NSA, which experts estimate employs between 100,000 and 200,000 employees with a budget of "at least $40 billion." This sum is included under agencies with an estimated 150,000 employees averaging an annual salary of $100,000.
Recap:
Executive -- 6,546,673 employees; salaries ..... $ 549,126,870,330.
Legislative -- 12,835 employees; salaries ....... 5,250,599,780.
Judicial -- 1,324 employees; salaries ....... 199,418,700.
Agencies -- 5,298,867 employees; salaries ....... 569,886,700,000.
Total = 11,859,699 employees; salaries .... $ 1,124,463,588,810.
The consequences of these stupefyingly large numbers are far more devastating than can be seen directly. To grasp the extent of that destruction, consider the level of prosperity that employers and employees achieve today despite regulations, taxes, permits, fines, and wasted time on government paperwork.
Because of government confiscation of producers' time and money, gone are the businesses that would have been started with that income. Never to be rec**ped is the time that would have been spent on innovations, inventions, discoveries and products that would have been made. Never to be retrieved is the prosperity that would have inevitably raised the standard of living, elevated the destitute and eventually wiped out poverty.
The money that politicians and bureaucrats have l**ted has gone and continues to go into the pockets of the nonproductive. Vying with one another to ingratiate themselves with the most politically influential, politicians and bureaucrats toss around their l**t to raise the height of the soapbox before which others rush to kneel. None of that money creates wealth. It stops dead, going no farther.
If the e*****rate is concerned about the destitute, they should demand radical and permanent deregulation that closes three-quarters of the agencies and cuts federal salaries by 50%. The result would free producers to create more goods and jobs, raising the standard of living for all.
If the e*****rate is concerned about the unemployed they should recognize that only those with savings can create jobs. If the e*****rate is concerned about the young or the elderly, the sick, disabled or abused, they should recognize that only the able, the competent, the thoughtful -- in other words, producers -- can alleviate and solve such problems.
Government cannot do it. "The Government" is only a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians that obstruct those who can.
The individual business person's right to life and property is being brazenly violated. Today's politicians and bureaucrats are the self-appointed plutocrats of this nation. And they have forced business people -- employers and employees alike -- to be their feudal serfs by means of how much of their income earners are allowed to keep.
When Obama or some other Retrograde (AKA "Progressive") complains about the growing "gap between the rich and the poor" they expect one to understand that the "gap" referred to is between the productive rich and the non-productive poor.
But knowing something about the mammoth amounts of money that bureaucrats and politicians routinely rip off from taxpayers paints a different picture. The actual gap is between the nonproductive rich -- politicians and bureaucrats -- on the one hand and on the other the productive of our nation that are the victims of over a trillion dollar heist.
Sylvia Bokor

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/the_trillion-plus_heist.html#ixzz2pARZJmwu
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Crayons Loc: St Jo, Texas

The bloated bureaucracy and it participants are nothing more than a demonic 'Giant-Succubus'

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

The name should be changed to "American Stinker" because their articles are asinine. You don't like what Congress is paid, then do something to here it changed. There's a lot of poverty in DC. You think the cleaning staff at VA hospitals are overpaid, you're outta your mind. You want too talk rich, the eaverage pay off a worker has increased 11.8% since 1978. The average CEO pay had increased 937%. Tell that to Sylvia.

ImLogicallyRight

We're talking about the over paid and over staffed bureaucrats, not the janitors. Stay on topic.

First, stop these continuing resolutions and prove every employees worth compared to what real workers in America, producers earn. Second, stop all raises and elevating the salaries in any position for a minimum of five years. Third, reduce the budget of every one of those departments from all branches of Government by 1% a year. Watch the deficit start to fall and American productivity increase.

debeda

Good piece! Mindblowing statistics🤨 Thanks for sharing

Radiance3

=============
This is interesting to discuss. I'm quite tired now. But here are some of my brief remarks.

When Bill and Hillary Clinton retired from the WH in 2001, she equivocally stated that they were broke.
Perhaps because of several law suits of women when Bill was at the WH.

However, when Hillary became Sec. of State, all of a sudden, she had been collecting hundreds of millions from foreign countries using her position as her capital.
And even selling 20% of US Uranium One for $145 million.

Likewise when Barack entered the WH, they were broke except 1st day of his life at the WH, he received Nobel Price. I don't know for what.
When Barack and family left the WH, they have assets of in several tens of millions of dollars, or perhaps hundreds of millions, including a $15 million home at Martha's vineyard, and 2 other mansions in Chicago, and the DC.

Many in Congress are paid so much with lucrative benefits. They stay for life. I think there must be term limits.

Ginsburg in Congress is no longer functional but grips her hold at the SC.

So many useless people in Congress linger for life. E.g. Maxine Waters, and so many others.

Many representatives in Congress were elected doing nothing for the people in their district. But their main jobs are vilifying America as a r****t country, and big mouthing president Trump with various ugly names, like AOC, Omar, and Tlaib.

I have never seen a predecessor president vilifying his successor until Barack Obama bad mouthed president Trump.
https://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/web-video/former-president-barack-obama-criticizes-president-trump

I pay too much taxes annually, as a single individual. I've earned my income, and I don't appreciate employees of the government, are paid almost trillions of dollars in total annually for their salaries, benefits and allowances. Some are spending government money like water. In addition, their luxurious retirement benefits for life.

The swamp must be cleaned.
============
Correction. Sorry I was really tired.
I said Ginsburg in Congress. Must be Ginsburg at the Supreme Court.

Big Kahuna

Those l*****t CEO's including those in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, Google, Facebook, and the Hollyweird crowd who are supporting Black Lies Matter need to be reigned in, pay their taxes, quit using tax shelters, quit having overseas accounts, and give their $$$ billions to the poor. Until I see people like Oprah, La Bonehead James, Bill Gates, Nanny Peeloosli, Stephen Speilberg, Barbara Streisand and Suckerberg giving most of their billions to the poor, all their talking and posturing about ine******y is just bogus bs.

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

So what is the gap between 3 people owning the wealth of 59% of the country.
The problem here is money is making money. We as Americans pay the rich an exorbitant amount of interest.
What is the interest paid on $1 Billion ?
That interest is being sucked up so fast it would make your head spin.
But, the thought of raising taxes on the rich is unspeakable.
Only because they said so.
We should not have Billionaires in this country. They are merely black holes where all the money winds up.
Where money goes to die.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

Which is why we need to return to our roots, where the "gentleman farmer" serves, compensated with room and board. What company could survive......................if they allow their employees to set their own salaries, benefits, work hours, vacation days, job descriptions, investigate themselves for ethics violations, set their own ethics rules, and spend more than half their time working on personal projects?

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

What would you suggest we do to stop Criminal Hill?? Easy to speak the obvious in need but just exactly what do you suggest in changing it, especially when we are the ones that put these incompetent greedy bastards in office and accept everything they do or do not do as supporting the “ citizens “that put them in office, if you happen to believe that, as well???

RRRoger

We probably have the smallest percentage of the population ever employed by private companies.
As far as I can tell, there are now more people employed by the Government than private industry.
We have the greatest number of people on Welfare ever.
We have the greatest number of underpaid foreign workers and i*****l a***ns ever.
We spend the most on education and only produce "get by" students that cannot pass tests.

No wonder this country is so messed up?

RRRoger

The bureaucrats would only reduce the increase by 1%, we need an actual reduction of at least 5% and a reduction in staff according to worth not politics or seniority.

RRRoger

Why do I keep hearing "We put them in office"?
In California, a majority of legal Citizens are outv**ed by criminals, i******s, and dead people.
And if that looks like it will not work, the corrupt L*****t Democrat Establishment Elite and RINOs
resort to outright v***r f***d.

Lt. Rob Polans ret.

The Nobel that Obammy got was for (being honest) nothing. This is according to him, "I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
And you know the rest.

debeda

Even the Nobel committee doesn't know why he got it. I looked it up. Perhaps for being the biggest con artist ever?