Instead, I should have gotten an AA from a community college and
gone to work as city clerk for the city of Gilroy. I could have
started at $92,148, with a reasonable chance of raising that to
$122,856 by the time I retired.
Obviously, I made a mistake. I should not have aced my SATs, gone to a prestigious college, studied my tail off, and graduated with a BS in engineering.
Instead, I should have gotten an AA from a community college and gone to work as city clerk for the city of Gilroy. I could have started at $92,148, with a reasonable chance of raising that to $122,856 by the time I retired.
Mind, Rhonda Pellin, who is retiring next month at the six figures stated above, is a lovely woman and always helpful. No doubt Shawna Serna, who will replace Rhonda, is equally lovely and helpful.
But Holy Toledo! A hundred grand for a city clerk!
Only in government will such astronomical salaries be common. In the private sector, salaries tend to be more modest, because in the private sector, businesses have to actually produce enough income to pay their own expenses.
The government, on the other hand, does not sow, neither does it reap. The government takes taxes from the rich (and the middle class and the working poor) and spends, spends, spends.
And why do the salaries of government bureaucrats so dwarf the salaries of private company employees? Simple. Government bureaucrat salaries are rubber stamped by spineless – sorry – I meant to say, are okayed by our honorable elected officials, such as the Gilroy City Council.
They permit such ridiculous sums because it is not their own money they are spending. It is just Other People’s Money – O.P.M. – and it is just as addictive as the opium that grows in poppies.
n n n
Speaking of addictions … I note with my annual sense of self-righteous complacency that National TV Turn Off week has come and gone. My husband and I did not turn off our TV, because we do not own one. We have been TV-free for 27 years. We even raised our children without Sesame Street. (Predictions to the contrary, they all learned how to read.)
I hasten to confess, the reason we do not own one is because I am addicted to electronic entertainment. If a TV is on in the room, I watch it compulsively. My husband is worse: if a TV is off in the room, he turns it on.
We have made accommodations to the prevailing culture. For instance, when I am sipping my morning cappuccino at Garlic City Coffee, and someone asks, “Did you see So-and-so on Fox last night?” I just say no. I used to say, “No, I don’t have a TV'” but invariably the questioner would immediately tell me that: A) he hardly ever watches television, and B) I should get a TV so that I can watch his favorite channels and shows.
In honor of TV Turn-Off Week, here are some interesting things about the TV-free minority. A study on this infinitesimal sub-minority, by Professor Barbara Brock of Eastern Washington University, finds that TV-free families are young, middle-class, college-educated, suburban home owners.
Two-thirds have religious affiliations. Forty-one per cent send their kids to public schools; the remainder are equally divided between private and homeschools. The families eat dinner together. TV-free kids are better readers, have more free time, and engage in creative play, sports and music more often than their TV-owning peers.
TV-free adults have more meaningful conversations, are thinner, do more community service, rate their marriages higher, get more sleep and have sex more frequently than theirs.
Other studies point out that heavy TV viewers more often suffer from obesity, diabetes and eating disorders. Heavy viewers also overestimate the prevalence of violent crime.
Another study, by Harvard economist Juliet Schor, shows that each additional hour of TV watched per week led to an additional $208 of annual spending. The lifestyles seen on TV, in the programs as well as in commercials, distort one’s sense of what’s normal, Schor argues.
Other researchers confirm this distortion; heavy viewers overestimate the percentage of the population who are millionaires, belong to a private gym, and suffer from dandruff and bladder control problems. Watching television increases one’s desire for things and causes anxiety about relatively minor problems, which two factors, coupled, lead people to buy more than if they didn’t watch.
Now, if I could just give up Spider Solitaire …
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every week.
