Encourage your children to work for the State, good or bad?

Public Sector Workers get the pay increase without question and a decent final salary pension on retirement, which is something the Private Sector workers can only dream about. Hey, and its all thanks to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown!! Good or bad?

It's the opposite here, Ron.  At least in this state.  (AZ)  State employees here haven't had a raise since Oct. 2006.  And there are none in the foreseeable future due to a $1 billion dollar gap in the budget, for fiscal year 2010, which we are now half way thru.  Our governor wanted to increase the sales tax by 1 percent to help close the gap, but our pea-brained state legislature want to do it thru more budget cuts.  They've already cut education budget by hundreds of millions.  They're run by the super right wing republicans who'd rather see state govt (and all the services it supplies) shut down before any tax increase.

We have always treated our Public Sector Workers too well here. I do care Ron and I do agree with you and it is annoying that we have to pay for all these perks through our taxes. The money will run out by the time I get to pension age I am absolutely sure of that!

 What I meant was I would not want that type of job no matter how much money and pensions they receive they are not free like me! I would hate to work in that sort of environment with constrictions and what I love about being self employed is that I don't have to retire - as long as my health is OK I will just carry on working past retirement age fingers crossed!

Like you say Kahu it is swings and roundabouts although in this country I would actually earn alot more working for the state in an accounting role and have a decent pension and most of my self employed clients have quite low incomes as well. Thinking about Ron's title of encouraging your children to work for the state I really don't know - it depends on the person. I was never any good as an employee - I am far too outspoken! I used to rub the bosses up the wrong way all the time! So for me self employment is better although not for all. Also having 3 school age children it suits me really well and enables me to be there for them if I'm needed and when they have a school assembly or concert to attend I can just swap round my schedule so for this reason I really enjoy the freedom of my job.

Several members of my family have worked in the UK for a number of years .... visa entry as 'highly skilled migrants' .... what they tell me is that the UK civil service is very hide-bound, so I could quite easily believe that if you told your boss to 'go and suck eggs' you'd put someone's nose out of joint! The UK civil service seems to be very specialist orientated .... in a small country like NZ we can't afford to specialise, so we're very much the generalists, very much the entrepreneurs within the larger organisation. My daughter (BCA, BSc) worked in Statistics NZ as a Junior Statistical Analyst .... decided to try working overseas and got a similar job with the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS). Within a short space of time she was supervising staff, and assisting with national development plans in Wales and was the UK representative to the EU in Brussels and Paris, during one of the rotations when the UK took its turn at the head of the EU. Having to learn french was a bit of a pain ... but being a NZer in France was a plus! My SIL has a UK passport and is a NZ registered chartered accountant, as is my niece in Glasgow.

Most self-employed people are able to structure their business to make less money but also take advantages from the tax system. They may seem to be cash poor but are asset rich ..... whilst still retaining the freedom that self employment gives them.