Monday, October 1, 2007

I Might Actually Pay Myself to Work

It's true, I might actually pay part of my own salary, isn't that a little silly? Now, I don't live in the city where I work, so my property taxes don't go to paying my salary, but what about my federal income tax that trickles down in the form of grants and other such things?

It's not just librarians either. What about teachers who live in the district where they work? Or firemen, or cops, or environmental investigators, or G-men? Doesn't this seem like a massive hemorrhage of money? Why should someone who's salary is paid for through income tax, have to pay income tax? They (or rather, we) pay our taxes so that someone else can tally them up (and get paid to do it!) and then give them back in the form of wages. Surely it would make more sense to simply not take the money out in the first place, and adjust our wages accordingly.
How hard would it be to discover how much money a government worker is paying themselves and get rid of it. It's a wash. Actually, what should be a zero sum game is not. Am I alone thinking this is extremely inefficient?

In relation to libraries, I'm just wondering how much money could be saved (here to be read as "spent on other expenses") if we take out the cost of this middle man. Unfortunately, I'm not good enough at math (here to be read "I'm much too lazy") to figure it out. But, on the surface, doesn't it seem to just make sense? Anyone?