Millions of American workers can’t find jobs and even the freespending Obama administration has frozen federal salaries for two years. But the situation is different at the United Nations, which gets approximately 25 percent of its budget from the United States.

The UN employs 489 executives, more than the number of equivalent positions (484) in the executive branch of the U.S. government, according to a recent report. And the many “special envoys” and such put the UN figure higher, just like the UN salaries. These can be more than 50 percent higher than U.S. government executive salaries because of a “post-adjustment multiplier” which is 61.3 percent in New York, site of UN headquarters. So the actual salary of a UN boss is 161.3 percent of what the UN pay chart shows, and higher still because the UN brass pay no income taxes. The UN even deploys a special compensation fund for American employees who by law must file U.S. tax returns. The United States has been bankrolling this kind of gold-plated waste for decades, getting little in return.

For all its peace rhetoric, the UN has failed to prevent wars such as the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict and has been useless against terrorism. The UN has promoted collectivist schemes such as the North-South Economic Dialogue and New World Information Order, a design for international press censorship. It has empowered corrupt Marxist buffoons such as Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow who spent 80 percent of the UNESCO budget at its Paris headquarters, where M’Bow and his family lived in a rent-free penthouse. And the rot goes right to the top.

Kurt Waldheim, UN Secretary General from 1972-1982, was a Nazi war criminal. As one analyst put it, the UN boss had “Waldheimer’s Disease,” a degenerative condition that makes you forget you were a Nazi. Despite the revelations the UN still paid Waldheim a pension of $102,000. So U.S. taxpayers helped a Nazi war criminal live in luxury, just like the current UN crew.

Besides its own massive debt, the United States has enough arrogant, overpaid and overpensioned officials on the federal payroll. In tough economic times, U.S. taxpayers should not be subsidizing more of the same at the United Nations.