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You can blame public employee unions for skyrocketing salaries and benefits for government workers---many of whom now far outearn the average private sector employee.

If you're a government employee, you can't get paid until someone in the private sector produces a good or service and is taxed for it.

-- Rush Limbaugh http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=253645

Life's tough for $144,000 garbage collectors

New York benefits emblematic of national government crisis

Posted: January 22, 2011
8:15 pm Eastern

By Gene Koprowski
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Health care and pension benefits for state and local government employees are out of control, experts are telling WND, and a new study by a think tank points to New York City as being emblematic of the fiscal crisis.

Taxpayers in the Big Apple are forced to pay $144,000 a year for salary, health and pension benefits for garbage workers, who are unskilled but unionized laborers.

Research by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank in New York, shows that when Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office after 9/11 the city increased spending on garbage workers' salaries by three and a half times the rate of inflation every year, growing the sanitation department budget from $1.3 billion a year to $2.2 billion.

Get Rep. Devin Nunes' "Restoring the Republic" autographed – only in the WND Superstore.

The budget increased despite the reduction in force of the overall garbage collection staff by 4 percent; and the same kind of disturbing fiscal trend is slowly being disclosed by other cities and states, experts tell WND.

Dramatic cuts in overall compensation are required for states and municipalities to simply survive, they conclude.

Read more: Life's tough for $144,000 garbage collectors http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=253645#ixzz1BvcZmeiN

[Argurnenoni]

Here's the current job listing for this job in New York:
The current starting salary of a Sanitation Worker is $31,200 per year. The current labor agreement provides for periodic increases to a maximum of $67,141 after 5 1/2 years. Did WND make this number up? Probably. Are they conflating the pensions of thousands of retirees into a wonked-up number to make it look like someone making below average pay is getting a huge windfall? Likely.

Pensions are an outdated system that was embraced decades ago when cities and their tax bases were growing like crazy and nobody thought there would ever be a balancing act between tax revenues and pension obligations. It's time to phase them into modern solutions like 401(k) and IRA plans.