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Published Sunday, October 30, 2011 in Opinion

Occupational hazard

By Alex McRae

The Newnan Times-Herald

The occupiers say Wall Street bankers should be jailed, or at least forced to drive used Yugos for the crime of earning lots of money and not sharing it with those who don't make as much.

Karl Marx's love children have finally reached puberty.

I agree with them on one thing. The jail part. If anyone on Wall Street, Main Street or on the rolls of the Columbia University Junior Marxist Coalition broke a law they should be prosecuted and punished.

Speaking of crimes against humanity, the "educators" who taught economics to the occupying idiots should be locked up for life.

The sound bites alone have been an indictment of American higher education. One of the protesters said the world's problems could be solved "if we did away with money, because we shouldn't have to pay for food because it's the world's food."

An even brighter student was caught on camera saying, "We deserve to live in a democracy where people can print their own money."

It would take volumes to explore the economic ignorance conveyed in that one statement.

The protesters claim to hate Big Money, yet they adore super-wealthy companies like Apple and Microsoft, who raised billions on Wall Street to make the smart phones and video games that keep the occupiers informed and entertained during the protests.

After a few weeks of seeing local parks turned to trash dumps, big city mayors are finally flushing some of the protesters. If the occupiers need to disrupt a new place filled with fat cats, they should strap on their Birkenstocks and shuffle over to our nation's capital.

According to new census data, metro Washington, D.C., has replaced California's high-tech corridor -- Silicon Valley -- as the nation's richest metropolitan area.

The median income of D.C. area residents is $84,523. The national median income is $50,046. Why the huge income gap? Astronomical government salaries.

Including all benefits, federal employees earn an average of $126,369. Did I mention the median income -- including benefits -- for private sector American workers is $50,046?

It gets better. The same week the census data was released, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said private sector employment was fine and we needed to hire more federal workers.

He said it with a straight face. He might actually believe it. He's also dead wrong.

Census figures show that since the recession officially began in December 2007, the private sector has lost 6.3 million net jobs -- a 5.4 percent drop. Government employment is down 392,000 jobs -- a 1.8 percent drop.

Government workers actually have the lowest unemployment rate of any industry, according to the census bureau. Our elected officials say we need to hire more. And they can't understand why "We, the little people" are a bit touchy?

I don't know a thing about economics, but I know this ... when government employees earn twice as much as the people who pay their salaries, it won't be long before the peasants who pay the bills pick up their pitchforks and camp out in Washington until some brand new public "servants" occupy our federal offices.

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(Send your e-mail comments to: alex@newnan.com )

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