The Wages of the State

Nobody asked but …

Somebody posted a meme on the Web stating that Senators make in the neighborhood of 170 dollars an hour but many of them voted against a minimum wage around $10 per hour.  Firstly, they shouldn’t be setting either wage level because, secondly, they have demonstrated that they don’t know much about what human life is worth.  Furthermore, the Congress sets the wages for all federal employees, and don’t we have a fairly certain idea that federal employees are either vastly underpaid or grossly overpaid — that is to say, specialists with professional skills are almost always underpaid (on the assumption that they will get their reward when they go over to the private sector) and the lower echelon military is paid slave wages compared to what they are asked to do.  On the other hand, political employees are overpaid to the extent that they should be paying the people a commission for letting them stand so close to the trough.  And finally, minimum wages are provide by the fat cats in Congress just so marginal businesses and marginal employees can artificially survive — this has nothing to do with how 98% of us live.

Kilgore