Few things are less mind-boggling than the persistent Republican belief that government jobs are seemingly less valuable (or outright destructive) than private sector jobs.
Typical comments range from the usual bureaucratic speak “The public sector is out of control…creating jobs at a faster rate than the private sector can pay for them” to this outright infuriating quote from Ann Coulter “If you have a government job, you’re actually doing worse than nothing, you’re taking from other people,” which basically equates getting a salary from the government to thievery. [I don’t think people busting their hump in the police or education professions consider what they do “nothing.”]
This brings up to two points that are rarely ever mentioned: 1. Bush created a lot of those government jobs, and under Obama the public sector has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs during mass layoffs WHILE the private sector has had 23 straight months of job growth. 2. Government jobs are still j-o-b-s, and ones that most people are happy to get.
Coulter’s quote shows just how radical fiscal conservatism has gotten in America. While liberals are happy to sneer at Rick Santorum for basically wanting to ban anything considered fun, social conservatives are no more (or less) radical than they have been for the last fifty years, while “libertarians” or “fiscal conservatives” have taken increasingly far-right positions on everything from abolishing public education to repealing any form of income taxes for people making more in a year than most Americans can hope to in their lifetime. Showing downright hatred for government jobs that are paid for with taxes, further showcases that.
It’s not a positive trend that public schools are downsizing teachers (50k a year, health insurance, decent retirement) and those jobs are being replaced with celebrated “private sector jobs” at McDonald’s (20k a year…maybe, no health insurance so don’t burn your hand in the grease traps, talk about retirement and you’ll get laughed at or fired), and most young people get that. The same young people that are headed to college to get a degree so they can land a government job and want some kind-of future, and aren’t really keen on seeing gov. jobs evaporate before their eyes. After all, cheering layoffs of firefighters, cops, teachers, government hospital workers, city planners, etc. doesn’t make you a “Conservative,” it makes you an asshole.