The Fat, Happy Federal Government

President Obama came to power calling for "shared sacrifice." Apparently, that call doesn't extend to the federal government.

Along with the budget-busting deficit,

the federal workforce will jump by 2% next year -- and by a whopping 15% if census workers are included.

Many private sector workers are taking pay cuts, sometimes to help their coworkers avoid being laid off. But not the federal government -- there, the average salary will jump from $72,000 per year to $75,000 per year. Nice work if you can get it, especially if you count the nice, 9-5 hours and the frequent federal holidays off.

Of course, all of this pleases the unions just fine; virtually their only growth in recent years has come from the public sector. For the rest of us, it's not so great.

Anyone naive enough to think that government is the answer to anything has to understand: Obama isn't getting rid of "privileged classes" of workers, or anything else. He's smart enough to understand that privilege will always be with us.

Rather, he's simply trying to make sure that those with the privileges -- like secure, well-paying jobs -- are his constituents, i.e. government workers, rather than in the private sector, where his high-tax, big-spend plans don't go down quite as well.