When does pay become "excessive"?

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ussfletcher

Platinum Member
Apr 16, 2005
2,569
2
81
We'd all be poor.

Not really. That would be about $50,000 a year for someone with a family of 4.

By the way, I am only extending this pay limitation to anyone in an elected or appointed position, engineers etc are not included.
 
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Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
There was an article by barrons online which I can't find ATM thats says public employees make 45% more than similar jobs in private. Years of blackmailing elected officials, unionization and COLA account for this. So yeah I'd said they are all overpaid and especially City of Bell which is lower middle class city and they did illegal stuff to get that pay and were arrested.
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
The difference is that the public sector is bankrupt! Comprende? We cant afford this crap anymore.

LOL there are cities in CA where retirements are suck 75% of budget and they can't even afford cops. Just give it a couple more years.... you think their pay was high? Wait till their retirements start. Google Pension timebomb.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
73,315
34,771
136
Not really. That would be about $50,000 a year for someone with a family of 4.

By the way, I am only extending this pay limitation to anyone in an elected or appointed position, engineers etc are not included.
My point is that if you tie the salaries of elected officials to the poverty rate, then the poverty rate will be raised so that their salaries can go up.
 

dquan97

Lifer
Jul 9, 2002
12,010
3
0
There was an article by barrons online which I can't find ATM thats says public employees make 45% more than similar jobs in private. Years of blackmailing elected officials, unionization and COLA account for this. So yeah I'd said they are all overpaid and especially City of Bell which is lower middle class city and they did illegal stuff to get that pay and were arrested.

http://www.tsweekly.com/6353-study-those-overpaid-public-employees-really-arent.html

A favorite tactic of conservatives these days is to bash public employees – especially those who belong to unions – as overpaid and underworked, stoking resentment among workers in the private sector whose pay and benefits don’t measure up.

But a new study by the Economic Policy Institute blows a pretty big hole in the claim that public sector employees are overpaid. In fact, they’re actually a little bit underpaid in comparison with private sector workers with similar backgrounds.

“Comparisons controlling for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability, reveal no significant overpayment but a slight undercompensation of public employees when compared to private employee compensation costs on a per hour basis,” the report states. “On average, full-time state and local employees are undercompensated by 3.7%, in comparison to otherwise similar private-sector workers.”

Public sector employees tend to be better educated than their private sector counterparts; 54% of full-time state and local government employees have four-year college degrees or better, compared to 35% in the private sector. Public employees at that education level receive 25% less in total compensation, on average, than private-sector employees with the same education level.

The more education the public employee has, the more underpaid he’s likely to be. Total compensation for private-sector employees with doctoral degrees averages $151,875, but in the public sector the average is only $120,642.

Less-educated workers, on the other hand, do make out a bit better in the public sector. Private-sector workers with only a high school diploma earn an average of $50,596 in total compensation, but those with the same education average $53,880 in public sector jobs.

The study found that public employees work somewhat fewer hours than their counterparts in the private sector. Even after adjusting for that, however, the study found that “wage differences remain large and significant.” Overall, the average private sector worker receives $71,109 per year in total compensation, while the average public sector employee gets $69,108.
 

PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
2
81
Its all relative, and depends on how cheap the company is. The company I work for hires overqualified people and pays us quite a bit below industry standard. So many people out of work, they can get away with it. Thats why I want a new job.

Go work in the public sector... find a job you are overpaid for while being under qualified.