The following questions where ask of me earlier today: Can the legislators insult the state employee anymore (Speaking about the 5% pay cut)? and Is our union effective?
First most of the State of Florida Employees are already paid 35% less than the national average. By cutting the salaries by 5% would hurt the Florida economy more by increasing the demands on state resources.
I would like to see what a across the board 5% cut supplies the state; No matter what the number is, the percentage saved will not address the amount of damage that would impact the state economy. State employees will have less to spend on their daily needs, if you take the factor of 5% less in their pockets that’s 10 to 20% less in taxes for the State, Local and Federal governments, because they will stop making purchases. This in turn creates fewer taxes for the government to collect.
Our elected officials just need to take a few steps back and really look at the details; we can’t afford a kneejerk reaction like the federal government did with the loans to all these banks and businesses.
Now as for the question, “Is our union effective?” Please, do not lump all State Employees into this statement. Now unions within select trades have a purpose, with that said, the past 20 years or so unions no longer had a justification for this purpose, they have created more problems than solutions for their members and the remaining work force.
Take a Florida Union for an example, the members pay their monthly dues to be part of a “Union” to help protect their jobs, and to be their voice in the legislative process. However, what they got is a President (of the union) that gets two or three big houses, and flies around the world in first class. If the union was truly doing their duty, those dues would be paying to supply better benefits for them, and truly have their voice heard in the legislative process. But instead they send bus loads of people to the capitol to blame someone else for the problems we are in.
The point is, we need to stop blaming everyone else and start looking in the mirror, because we created this problem ourselves. Yes, we created this problem, we where spending money we knew we did not have, by buying homes and cars that we knew we could not afford. But now we stand here and blame the banks and credit companies, saying well they let us do it.
When are we going to stand up for ourselves and start being the great people of the United States of America again? The path we are on will turn into a set of tracks and then there will be no stopping nor getting off of this train.
Let me close with a statement that Nikita Khrushchev (Leader of the Soviet Union – former USSR) made: “America will fall without a shot being fired. It will fall from within.”
He said this at the beginning of the Cold War, and if we stay on this path, that just what may happen.
Good Luck and Good Night
