Hello? Anybody out there?

I really shouldn't read the paper. Every time I do see something that gets me upset. Today, for instance, there was a short piece from Politifact.com talking about wages for government versus private sector employees, from which we get this line:

The article uses Bureau of Economic Analysis data from the U.S. Commerce Department to conclude that federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009, while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation.

Maybe I'm imagining things, but that average seems awfully durned high. 10% of the workforce is out of work, which means they aren't making anything, and then there is large number of people working minimum wage jobs. Can't tell how many that is for sure, but one page claims it's 30 million.

We have a workforce of roughly 150 million people. 15 million are not working, 30 million are making minimum wage. I don't know how many people work for the government, but I suspect it's between 5 and 10 million. 'Course it depends on how you count. I mean there are Federal employees, but there are also state, county, and local employees all over the country. Then there's the Post Office and the armed forces. Do you count individuals working as government contractors? Didn't find any numbers I would trust.

Say we have a 100 million people working in the private sector and making more than minimum wage. On average then, these people are going to be making $85 thousand a year.

We all know that there are always many more people at lower level positions than there are near the top. I think a better number would be the median wage, and I'll bet it's like half of the average. For example: for every person making a million dollars, you would need 16 people making minimum wage to get an average income of $60,000. The median in that case would be $10,000, which would give you better idea of what most people were making.

I guess my whole point is that for the average to be that high, there must be quite a few people (like a 100,000) making a stink load of money (like a million a year).