Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind Read Online Free Page A

government employees approach their jobs as a privilege to serve. What changed?
    Labor unions came along, unionized many government employees, and drastically increased what a government employee could expect to receive in pay and benefits. Now most forms of “public service” are more profitable than working in the private sector. The government employee unions also trained government employees to demand ever higher pay and never-ending benefits, all funded by their fellow citizens. 1
    To be clear, we shouldn’t begrudge individual government employees for what they get in pay and benefits from the government. As we wrote this book, we even thought more than a few times that we should go out and apply for government jobs ourselves. We understand that government workers don’t make the system, they just benefit from it. But make no mistake, the culture of “public service” has changed from a focus on giving back to a focus on getting. And through their incessant focus on extracting more from the employer, unions have encouraged government workers to consider their jobs as an entitlement, not a privilege.
    Many Americans, including Tea Party supporters, are angered by the decline of true public service. According to Tea Party advocate Donna Wiesner Keene, “Tea Party members are loyal tax-paying citizens, but their anger begins with the lack of value received fortaxes—the transformation of government worker from asset to liability, of the people’s government to the union’s government.” 2 With this crucial change, government employee unions have been able to unite all net tax receivers into a huge special interest group that is focused on growing the government. Net tax receivers are those Americans whose income comes from the government one way or another—as salary, welfare benefits, and subsidies. Don’t government employees pay taxes? Of course they do. But it isn’t close to the amount they receive in salary and benefits—and, after all, they’re really just paying back tax dollars they already received from you. They give the government a cut of the pie they just took from your stove. This doesn’t make government employees bad people, and many government workers surely give good service in exchange for their salary. But whether government workers work hard for their money or not, it doesn’t change the fact that they are dependent on government to earn their living and are paid with taxpayer dollars.
    This mammoth special interest group of net tax receivers is represented by the Democrat Party. Whether individual net tax receivers are liberal or conservative, it is the Democrat Party that supports their personal interests in keeping government large and growing it bigger.
    On the other side is a dwindling group of people who actually pay the taxes that keep the other group afloat. How much longer are taxpayers going to be able to support the weight of net tax receivers?

You Should Work for the Government
    Once unions organized government workers, the earlier pay gap between government and private sector workers closed. Then, the gap expanded in the other direction. Government service is now far more lucrative than private sector work ever has been or probably ever will be. If you get a government job, you can be set for the rest of your life—above market salary, great health benefits, and virtually unlimited job security while you are working, followed by early retirement and a generous and steady guaranteed pension until your death.
    The smartest among you who didn’t know this before reading this book will put the book down right now and go apply for a government job. Michelle Obama, our First Lady, says: “Don’t go into corporateAmerica. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that.” 3 Michelle Obama captures the message that we are all given about government