The long-running rivalry between the two services — public versus private — has been settled by COVID-19. Why would anyone risk the dangers and uncertainty of free enterprise when they could have the safety and security of a large and ever-expanding government?
Doctors, nurses and other “front-line” forces on the public payroll have been loudly and justifiably lauded for enduring daily risks to their health, and even life itself, to do their jobs. On the other side of the equation, grocery clerks, delivery people and fast-food workers confront the same dangers for less money and none of the security.
It used to be you didn’t get paid as much to work for the government, but you had fixed hours and knew your job was safe. That gap has been narrowing for quite a while. As economist Jack Mintz noted Wednesday in the Financial Post, public-sector pay in 2019 was higher ($28 per hour versus $21 per hour on average), the benefits better and the pension more secure. While those private employers that still offer pensions have moved overwhelmingly toward defined contribution plans in which the eventual payout is far from certain, more than 80 per cent of public employees have plans with defined payments guaranteed by the government, which means by the taxpayer. If there’s a war, a financial crash or a pandemic there’s nothing to worry about; private plans may struggle to meet their obligations but the government (meaning the taxpayer) never runs out of money.
Of the millions of Canadians put out of work by the pandemic, either permanently or temporarily, almost all (Mintz says 96 per cent) work (or worked) for private employers. Thousands of businesses have closed, but public employment soldiers on. Retail workers, restaurant staff, corporate employees, sidelined salespeople … an entire army of working stiffs have no way of knowing if they’ll have a job to return to, but the only way a government paycheque will be halted is if Ottawa’s disastrously inept Phoenix payroll system continues to malfunction.
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See Also:
(1) Trudeau and his gov’t must answer for billions being spent
(2) Canadians send Trudeau wake-up call on China
(4) RCMP and feds atone for sins by using legal gun owners as scapegoats
(5) New facts prove the utter uselessness of Justin Trudeau’s gun ban
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