I said nothing as it would have betrayed my astonishment. Why could an intelligent person think it was
ok for a taxpayer funded person to retire at 60 while the people who paid her salary
all along (and her pension) will have to work till at least 65?
This is a common problem with people who work in the taxpayer
funded sector. They really don’t understand
where the money is coming from to pay them.
The money is not coming from government, government is just a conduit. All the money is from the private
sector and the people who work in it. As I’ve said before, no person
working in the public sector can ever pay for themselves. The most they will contribute to their own
job is the taxes they pay. Which leaves
the other 60% to be found somewhere. And
even that is a false position once you deduct the contribution we all have
to pay for health, roads, police, fire etc.
I was relating this conversation to someone very senior in
the thinking of the future for the Scottish economy. I was surprised and delighted to hear his thinking and mine agreed. That included every 7 years teachers should
take a sabbatical in the real world to find out what it is they are actually preparing
their children to enter.
But our collective joy was brought down to reality when we
considered “which political party would dream of taking on the educational establishment?” None we mused.
It’s like the NHS. We
all know it’s a total basket case that is utterly out of control. Yes, there are very hard working people in the
NHS. But they are being betrayed by unions, political parties and some, but not
all, clinicians who will not put their head above the parapet and say things
need to change radically.
Until people are
brave enough to lift their voices and state the obvious, that things like education and health are in a bad
state and that we should stop kidding ourselves otherwise, we will be stuck, going nowhere, lacking
in innovation. And slowly but surely we
will continue to sink these once great “sectors” as we all argue about the
things that are ultimately meaningless.
1 comment:
I strongly agree with your sentiments about the retirement plans of this sixty year old, but I don’t agree with looking at it through the lens of the private vs public sector.
I share your concerns about who pays for this person’s retirement. But I see inter-generational theft as being a far more serious factor. Who will pay for this person’s pension? Have they paid enough in to justify a continuous twenty year holiday which was never envisaged when pensions were introduced? And then the increasing cost of health expenses, and residential care support much later in life?
Again who’s going to pay for all this? Ah that would be up and coming generation, they will fund this and generate the wealth to pay for it. That is the same generation who inherit a vast national debt (still rising despite the promises), who can’t get decent paying jobs and who can’t afford to buy houses because already inflated asset prices have been propped up by QE. I think this is a much greater iniquity that transcends any public/private considerations.
Indeed I would say it quite easy to identify parasites in the private sector (parasites = taking more out than they put in). They are found in our state backed de-risked ‘private’ banks, in the profiteering power companies (have you switched recently?), in a poorly regulated financial sector. They are no more ‘earning’ their largess than this deputy head teacher.
Hey I enjoyed reading your thoughts very much. Happy Christmas and have a great break!
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