A Modest Proposal for Giving You Your Very Own UN Staffer
Don’t panic. This is hypothetical. But I’ve been thinking about those recent comments by the U.S. envoy for United Nations management and reform, Joseph Torsella, in his effort to illustrate the profligacy of the UN’s soaring core budget. Torsella just told the UN General Assembly’s budget committee that while the UN may regard $100,000 as a mere rounding error in a core budget now topping $5 billion per year, a big chunk of that money comes from U.S. taxpayers. According to Torsella, $100,000 represents the total federal taxes paid on average by 16 hard-working American families, laboring for a full year.
Torsella also said that for the more than 10,000 UN staffers paid out of the UN’s core budget, total compensation now averages $119,000 per staffer. At the UN, that kind of thing is tax-free.
So, let’s do a bit of arithmetic. U.S. taxes provide the funds for 22% of the UN’s core budget. So, out of a total of more than 10,000 UN staffers now making an average of $119,000 per year, the U.S. supports more than 2,200. Using Torsella’s ratios, for the U.S. to cover the salaries of each of these more than 2,200 staffers requires the total federal taxes paid over a full year by almost 20 average American working families. In round numbers, this means that roughly 44,000 average American working families toil for a full year to provide America’s share of the salaries paid to UN staff, over that same interval, out of the UN’s core budget.
Of course, one reason the UN gets away with its profligate, sky-rocketing budgets, staff numbers, and pay hikes for personnel is that the money from U.S. taxes is not collected from 44,000 specific working families. Instead, the bill is spread as a lesser-ticket item among millions of tax-paying Americans, most of whom are chiefly busy earning a living (and paying taxes), and don’t have time to focus on how the UN spends its share of the swag.
Why not amend that, and make it a lot more personal for a select number of average American taxpayers? Instead of paying the UN out of the general pot of federal tax revenues, the U.S. government could pick 44,000 average American working families, divide them into groups of 20, exempt them from all other federal tax claims, and assign each group its own personal UN bureaucrat to support. These taxpaying families could even be invited to take an interest in the individual UN staffers whose salaries have become their direct responsibility. They could peruse the list of UN benefits, cost-of-living adjustments, and other perquisites. They could cruise the web for news of the latest travels, reports, and other accomplishments of their assigned UN beneficiary/bureaucrat. They could drop by the UN offices in New York, and share a cappuccino, and check out the lifestyle for themselves. Then they could go home and get back to work, earning the money to pay the taxes to support the specific UN staffer with that average take-home pay of $119,000.
I’d wager that would provide a degree of valuable oversight to which the UN, during its entire 66 year history, has never, ever been exposed. It could work wonders in clarifying and focusing the current Washington debate over funding for the UN. (It could also have its highly entertaining moments.)
OK, I know. For a lot of very good reasons, U.S. tax policy does not work that way. Nor is it safe to give the UN any opportunity, however odd, to get its hooks directly into U.S. taxpayers. The UN has been angling for that for years, and in that direction lie horrors even worse than what goes on now. But as a thought experiment, it is interesting to imagine the average American working family taking a direct interest in the work habits and lifestyle of the average UN staffer, so richly supported by funds from the U.S. tax pot. What would they find they are getting for their money?
Well, we could solve all of this by simply putting an end to the UN by not funding it anymore. It was an idea that never really worked well and caused more problems than it was worth. Save the money and invest it into a few more carrier battle groups. The way the world is going these days, we’re going to need them very, very, soon.
Preach it, brother!
Please stop bankrolling the UN. Pull the plug. The UN can’t survive without your tax-dollars and it doesn’t deserve to. The British government, which considers aid to foreign dictators to be above criticism, will never spontaneously end its subscription to the UN, but Cameron won’t be able to pretend that anyone else can pick up the tab, if the US refuses, quite rightly, to do so.
[Off-topic, but I do think that there should be a ban on that dreadfully over-used and (let's be honest) insincere, self-applauding, expression, "a modest proposal"? Even when first deployed, it was no more than an elegant rhetorical device. Now, it lends nothing to an argument. It certainly doesn't sound ground-breaking. It doesn't even convey the impression that any message of import is about to follow - quite the contrary, because the introduction is so hackneyed.]
As long as the family gets a chance to defund the buzzards, I’m in. Buzzard will starve on my charity for the UN. Faster, please.
>>Nor is it safe to give the UN any opportunity, however odd, to get its hooks directly into U.S. taxpayers. The UN has been angling for that for years
Whaa? Yikes. Look to UN Secretary-General Barack Hussein Obama to pursue that.
But to your proposal: it’s poetry. Maybe instead of assigning the 44,000 families, the IRS should ask for volunteers, especially from among the educated elite. No takers? Tap people whose donation patterns at opensecrets.org indicate sympathy for giant leeches.
Seriously, it makes me angry. Richard Butler’s book, The Greatest Threat, is full of those characters, and to think they’re spitting on me and taking my money at the same time is maddening.
The UN no longer serves any useful function. Instead of saving some marginal amounts of money, why not ask it to relocate out of the US and for the US to relocate out of the UN.
The U.N. is a subversive monster doing the bidding of the OIC against Israel and America – and we, like idiots are paying for it !!!!
Give me one good reason why anti-American, dishonest bureaucrats and “experts” with a sovereignty-killing, anti-constitutional global agenda hell bent on usurping our rights and freedoms, should be funded by US !!!!
They are currently using the stealthy AGENDA 21 to work their amazing magic against us – this is but one of many – and again; we like fools, just let them do it.
I have to admire women like Claudia Rosett and Ileana Ros Lehtinen that bring this to our attention and lead the way to holding these runaway crony bureaucratic elites to account. This leaves only one question in my mind:
Where are the gate-keeping statesmen of our nation?
I’d consider taking a U.N. staffer, but I really have no need for a useless and expensive bureaucrat.
Oh Claudia – have followed and respected your coverage of the UN for some time. But this time – you have let your seeming personal dislike of the organization cloud you writing. Quite a few of the “facts” you seem to quote are not facts at all. Folks, the average “take home pay” for all UN staff members, professional and general services, is NOT, repeat is not $119,000. This is simply not true. And please give me some facts to back up the “pay raise” claim you make. AND PLEASE – spare me the “tax free” stuff. They all pay Staff Assessment, which is a tax by another name a quite progressive – a simple fact. Please, bash the UN all you want for the right reasons, but GET THE FACTS RIGHT. You are starting to sound like at typical left winger – the facts seem to be irrelevant. Like you article, good points – but I’m a little disappointed.
Now I’m stuck with the mental image of Sally Struthers doing an infomercial. “For only $119,000 a year, you can support your very own UN staffer. You get a photo, letters and anti-semetic finger paintings from the your very own sponsored UN staffer. Do it for these poor bureaucrats. Operators are standing by…”
well, Gingrich said in the questions and answeres couple of days ago that if elected, he will reduce the power of UN to merely a debating podium. He said he sees their uselessness and harm effects.
I would give money to watch the UN building burn to the ground and the UN delegates thrown out of America. They could build a new UN building in Kenya, but without American taxpayer money!
I don’t see them cutting off funding until we vote in a majority TEA Party members in the House and Senate and a President sympathetic to the TEA Party.
I am not holding my breath.
This idea should be applied to our own government also. There should be a citizens shadow group for each and every federal and state government agency and department. We can monitor how effectively (and cost effectively) they perform their functions and also analyze the need for them to exist at all in some cases.
Government consists of mostly non-elected people and there is no such thing as unbiased evaluation and accountability when other politicians and bureaucrats are the watchdogs. We can “crowd source” this. People will listen if these evaluations come from apolitical volunteers.
I say pull all the funding on the UN. The US tax payer does not need to support a second bunch of ineffective, self-righteous, two-faced bureaucrats. Let’s turn the old building into a low rent housing tenament and leave the local real esate and park to the locals.
I propose that the G20 become the new replacement for the UN. The money pits of the world can make do without us. Even Israel.
By the way, they should be in excellent financial shape soon. The new Leviathan natural gas deposits off the coast of Israel are the biggest anyone has discovered in the last decade. They will not be hurting for energy or food.
I am fed up of the bashing of UN staff by the US media – inevitably full of misinformation as another reply already pointed out – yes we do pay “taxes” (and don’t get the benefit of US tax deductions either), we get no social security rights in our home countries (unlike the US staff at the UN) – we have to pay parking tickets and we don’t have diplomatic immunity. The majority of staff do not earn $100,000 or whatever it is you claim. Yes there are a few overpaid “big shots” – but then your own Governments fight to put their own people in those political spots! We who work here can only do what your Governments instruct us to do – we don’t make the policies – we carry them out. If you don’t like them – tell your Government – don’t bash us. Actually, would be nice if in reality I had time and place to sit around “drinking cappucinos” instead of working late and on weekends.
I’ve recently started a weblog, and the information you offer on this internet site has helped me greatly. Thanx for all of your time & work.