Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn believes that allowing Ontario provincial taxpayers to see a list of all public sector employees who make more than $100,000 a year isn’t a nod to basic accountability and open, transparent government, but rather a “transparently political attack on unionized civil servants and other public sector employees.”
He calls it “salary pornography“:
“Society normally frowns on peep shows and public voyeurism. Except in Ontario, where it’s open season on public servants’ private lives. Log on to any computer, draw the drapes and pore through the perverse pleasures of the now notorious ‘sunshine list.’
“It claims to shed light on the darkest corners of the provincial bureaucracy. In reality, it stokes vilification and humiliation of frontline public servants….”
Have Ontario taxpayers no sense of decency?
Civil servants are parasites…
So are any jobs created arising out of gov’t mandates and regulations.
The salaries issue is a red herring. It doesn’t matter what they earn, because what really matters is whether or not these government departments are creating anything of value in themselves.
By focusing on an individual’s salary, you turn public-sector employees into martyrs, i.e. you personalize the issue. Then, if cutbacks occur, you just end up looking like the asshat who enjoys putting people out of work.
But, if you can show that these departments spend $X million and provide only $X-Y million in benefit, then you have a justification in cutting back.
So don’t blame the bureaucrat for wanting to keep and expand his job. He’s only responding to incentives.
Blame the decision-makers for giving the bureaucrat that option. Focus your attention on our elected officials and the wastefulness of their decisions.
The real solution to all of this is smaller government. The best way to shrink the bloated government is for all government workers (from PM to p.t janitors) to get at a maximum the minimum wage.
Do we really want to be controlled by government or do we want to control it?
Must be a teacher in his immediate family….
When I was in the Armed Forces anyone knowing my rank and date of seniority (which are published) could look up and find what I earned to the penny. And I never got to $100,000! The ‘sunshine list’ is definitely in the public interest.
cohn, cohn…damn it, not one of us gypsies, and yet he’s probably a better thief, we are losing the race to these thieving interlopers:-))))
Black Mumba, could do a google and find out what heritage cohn might just be:-)))
Up until Trudeau and his ideas civil servants received 80% of comparable industry jobs.The reasoning was that with job security and pensions civil servants were paid the same.Trudeau argued that to get better people in govt,govts had to pay more.He was wrong.He just got high paid civil servants that do their best to hang on to their positions.FDR in the USA scoffed at the idea that civil servants have a union.He said that civil servants work for the people,not the govt and the people have NO alternative.
NME666 – That’s O’Cohn.
Yep. Too thick. I must have missed that day in my advanced tax course. If they make 90 grand and they only take home 60 grand then …? Oh forget it, I’m too thick to ever understand.
Posted by: Scar at March 26, 2012 1:54 AM
I will attempt to pierce through the thickness. Scar, suppose I give you nine apples and immediately take back three of them. Two questions: a) how many apples do you have? and b) how many apples did you give me?
Answers: a) you have six apples and b) you didn’t give me any apples, I just pretended to give you nine and took back three, really giving you only six.
Put another way: if I as a private person gave you $90000 in $10 bills – three briefcases – and then took one briefcase away, then c) how much money did you get from me? and d) how much money did you pay me?
The answers to c) and d) should be obvious: c) $60000 d) zero.
If this is not obvious, get your money back from that advanced tax course.
It’s really leftist brain pornography…//
I think I have received about 2200 over 36 years.
Then you would agree that the over $$180 billion spent on free loader farm subsidies over that 36 years has been a colossal waste. As a conservative (as conservatives), why do you stand silent in the face of such egregious, indeed, criminal squandering of public resources? Why?
They aren’t “wage earners”, pill. They’re -government- employees. They are a -cost- to society.
I’m sure policemen, nurses, teachers, doctors etc. would be surprised to know they do absolutely nothing to earn their paycheck.
phil,You are either blind,stupid or both.Long ago I told you to BUY A FARM,get in on easy street.According to you,its so easy even you could just live off of subsidies and never have to work another day in your life.Pardon me,if momma stays alive and keeps her job as a Walmart greeter,a worthy occupation,one that you should aspire to and uphold the family tradition,then you are allready there.
Yes, the people who pave the roads and teach the kids (among other things) are producing something. The real question is whether they’re making more than free market wages, and whether the activities provide value for the time and effort spent. The correct way to find out is to privatize their activities.
Police, military and courts are the proper functions of government, which help keep society running smoothly, shall we say. They can’t be privatized.
But as ‘fiddle’ said, “jobs created arising out of gov’t mandates and regulations” are worthless. That goes especially for the government sector enforcers, but every big corporation has a vice-president for government and regulatory affairs in charge of a department of employees who don’t produce anything. Then there’s all the time wasted reporting to useless and unnecessary bodies like the CRTC – time that everybody there could be using productively, but aren’t.