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Boy did the bees come out to zealously protect their pot of honey.
I know a few government "workers". I use the term loosely. One guy from the Department of Agriculture comes to my work place and spends 90% of his time talking. A cousin who works for the water board spends one hour a day actually doing any work and gets paid for 8 hours.
No, I have no interest in working for the government at any level. I wouldn't want to a part of anything that exists on the back of taxpayers.
Yeah, everyone seems to have a story about some lazy gov't worker that doesn't do anything and those stories seem to get repeated over and over like it the norm. Oh those terrible gov't workers taking my tax dollars.
According to the study you posted, median annual pay for private sector workers is $65,728. For federal workers, $67,184.
Only one group of state government workers, Connecticut at $65,838, has higher median pay than the private sector; and it is still lower than federal. Notice that my state comes in at $36,058, less than 55% of private sector pay from the study you cited.
On the teachers, it is virtually impossible to make an apples to apples comparison between public and private. From Table 3 you can see that private school teachers are more likely to be teaching in a high cost of living area than public school teachers. From Table 4, private school teachers are three times more likely to be teaching without a degree while public school teachers are slightly more likely to be teaching with a Masters or a degree higher than a Masters.
And by far the biggest factor, private school teachers are also three times more likely to be teaching part time, with over 1/5th of private school teachers teaching part-time.
Sorry, but you need studies that compare the state private to state public for each state since cost of living and salaries change so much. You can't take the national average and compare to the states. It either needs to be national vs national or state vs state.
Sorry, but you need studies that compare the state private to state public for each state since cost of living and salaries change so much. You can't take the national average and compare to the states. It either needs to be national vs national or state vs state.
When every single state employee workforce in the country earns less than federal workers, and only one state employee workforce (in a relatively small state) earns more than private workers, that's a disingenuous demand. (Especially when you consider the normalization of federal wages across all states, so that salaries are pretty standard from state to state.)
Even the Reason Foundation agrees that compensation is lower for state and local government workers than the private sector (but also finds that the value of job security outweighs the difference): Reason Foundation - Comparing Private Sector and Government Worker Salaries
"According to the analysis, state government workers earn an average of 11.4 percent less than private-sector workers of similar education and work experience and local government workers earn 12.0 percent less. Due to the greater benefits received by public sector workers, the gap narrows when these benefits are factored in, to 6.8 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively."
That 20 years for law enforcement people isn't what it looks like either. I worked for a federal egency where most of the people in my office were gun-carrying federal agents. They were required to put in at least a 10-hour day, and sometimes when the work demanded it, they worked late into the evenings and on weekends. The 10 hours were actually tracked to be sure they were doing the time. When I left at 3:30, they still had a long time to go. That's how they qualified for a 20-year retirement,
Boy did the bees come out to zealously protect their pot of honey.
I know a few government "workers". I use the term loosely. One guy from the Department of Agriculture comes to my work place and spends 90% of his time talking. A cousin who works for the water board spends one hour a day actually doing any work and gets paid for 8 hours.
No, I have no interest in working for the government at any level. I wouldn't want to a part of anything that exists on the back of taxpayers.
Those kinds of people are everywhere, not just on the government payroll. I'm sure everyone can tell a story about the office slacker.
Does it bug anyone besides me that public employees that are funded by our tax dollars tend to have these great benefit packages where they can retire after twenty years of "service" while the rest of us private sector chumps are probably going to end up working into our 70ies? I mean good for them but the fact that I'm their employer and provide such generous retirement benefits to them that I don't get to enjoy myself bothers me. Does it bother you? Sound off.
Here's an idea....why don't you get a job with the government? Then according to your analysis, you can get a huge paycheck for standing around all day doing nothing, and retire when you're 50.
Several posters here are correct: law enforcement, firefighters and air traffic controllers are the only ones with 20 year retirements. Reason: those three career fields require employees in very physically and mentally sharp condition. How many non-government employees have to pass a PT test twice a year - at 55 years of age?
The rules notwithstanding, I did over thirty years and earned every cent of my pension (and every ache and pain I'll live with forever). I also took in tens of millions of dollars in fines, forfeitures and restitution - many times more than every cent the government ever paid me in salary and will pay me in pension. In fact, many times more than my wife earned in salary and will earn in pension, too. (She just retired after 27 years as a flight medic for Uncle Sam's Airplane Firm.)
So the taxpayer made a profit hiring me. And I paid for my wife's salary and pension. And the treasury is fuller because I went to work.
20 year retirements are indeed reserved for law enforcement, military and firefighters and for good reasons. I will have 28 years with the federal government when I become eligible to retire at 60. The OP is probably similar to the people that thought I was crazy for accepting a position in the public sector. We all make decisions, we're all responsible for the outcome of those decisions. Sounds like sour grapes coming from the OP to me.
At least in California, it wasn't clear at all 30 years ago that you would become wealthy from a public safety job.
Now that it's obvious, I expect that those wages/benefits will have to get reduced.
To be fair, a lot of the arguing is apples and oranges. There are a number of jobs (I believe Fed pensions aren't all that amazing) that don't have high value income and benefit streams, while there are those that do. Each side tends to pick outliers. A quick example for sunny CA is the Roseville PD chief retired a few years ago. Smallish department, 50 years old, 24 years on the force, $134k (+healthcare) / year forever. It's remarkable what the present value of that kind of income is.
And, no, police (even the desk-bound flavor) don't live shorter life spans than everyone else. CalPERS claims that they live a few months longer on average.
Last edited by Saxon X Seaworthy; 06-12-2015 at 06:23 PM..
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