Government Workers: The New Upper Crust?

By: Bill_Bonner

We’re on zombie watch…

They’re everywhere…but especially here in the Washington metropolitan area.

Zombies get their money from the government – directly or indirectly. Or some other perk…some edge…some benefit.

Just open The Washington Post. Skip the international news, which is nothing but humbug and claptrap…usually having to do with Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel.

Go to the local news.

Let’s see…how about this: a little item. Martena Clinton made the news after her car was towed by the Secret Service and then lost. She had parked in a handicapped section. But wait…what’s this? Ms. Clinton isn’t handicapped. She’s not a half-wit. She’s not lame. In fact, in the photo, she looks pretty good.

So what’s she doing in the gimpy parking section? Well, her husband is said to be mobility challenged.

Special parking spaces seemed like a nice gesture when they were originally introduced. But the zombies quickly took advantage of them. Now, they’re used by friends and families of an invalid…often passed down from one generation to the next after the cripple dies.

That’s how zombies do it. They take advantage of an easily-corruptible system. Government salaries and benefits, for example, are typically about 30% better than those in the private sector.

You can see the difference here in Bethesda. The houses are all tarted up. The cars are all new and expensive. The streets and restaurants are full. Everything is modern, rich….

The editor of US News & World Report talks of a “great divide” in the US…those who have government salaries…and the rest of us. People who work for government – or otherwise are supported by the government – have made steady income gains over the last 30 years. Others have not. Government employee labor unions have grown while others have declined.

Being a zombie pays. And it’s likely to pay even better in the future. Because now zombies control the White House (it was the zombie states…those that owed the most money…and those that get most money from the government) that elected Barack Obama. They control the Congress too. Zombies have the time (what else do they have to do?) and the resources (often, direct contact with the government itself) to get involved in elections. They have a motive too – they can pass legislation putting more money in zombie hands. Military contractors, tax lawyers, “educators” and the handicapped – all have a keen interest in elections. The rest of us have our work, business, families, careers to attend to. Not that every tax lawyer is a chiseler, every military contractor is a cheat, and every person who can’t walk is a malingerer – far from it. But they have to be doubly honest and independent to avoid the corrupting gravity of Planet Zombie.

Bill Bonner [send him mail] is the author, with Addison Wiggin, of Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of The 21st Century and Empire of Debt: The Rise Of An Epic Financial Crisis and the co-author with Lila Rajiva of Mobs, Messiahs and Markets (Wiley, 2007).

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