I like the idea of a pay czar. If you take tax payers' money, then you should be on a leash. If you are living on the dole, you should not be living the high life. Dole should cover bread, not caviar, and a mini-van, not a Maserati. Those delights must be earned in the free market.The problem I have is that the pay czar's power doesn't extend to the greatest recipients of tax dollars-- government bureaucrats and politicians.
I suppose we cannot hope that any bureaucrat would accept what he is worth. He sought a position in the bureaucracy because he could not compete in the free market. And in any case, a worker is not likely to pay for the privilege of working!
By any objective measure, government is woefully inefficient. It is thus by design. Do social workers really want everyone working? Do teachers really want self-directed learners? Do road crews really want to use better road building methods?
I once was contracted to do an educational survey for Canada Employment, really Canada Unemployment, since this is where you go when you lose your job. Anyway, I met with a young woman who laid out the job.
I was a little disappointed. On the phone she had led me to believe the contract would take six weeks to complete, but what she showed me was about three days work.
Is this all?
Oh, yes, you have only six weeks to complete it.
Minimum wage was $5.25 an hour at the time. My contract paid me $1000 for a 20 hour week plus telephone expense without receipt for $500 a month plus 1000 kilometres of car use at $2.00 a km, again without the need for receipts, and $50 a day for meals which oddly required receipts.
What a lovely six weeks that was! I was slightly depressed when I went to meet the young lady a month and a half later.
She noted my look. Do you need more time? I knew that was too much work. We have more money, now. Could you finish in six months?
I looked dumbfounded. Before I could answer she added:
I could raise the rates to $1200 a week.
And she did and increased all the other benefits, too. Have you ever tried to spend $750 a week on meals? It was fun. To this day, waitresses speak of my generosity!
The extra six months came to an end too soon but because I had taken a three day job and turned it into a 210 day job, I got a bonus of three months pay and expenses.
To my credit, I did tell the woman that I had finished the job in three days, but she said that I should check everything. If she didn't spend the money she had, she would lose funding in the following year and would be seen as a poor performer. She was a single mom and blah, blah, blah, you know the story.
Stand up. Insist the pay czar regulate the bureaucrats!
