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It is more detailed than that. While doing your comparison, look at the level of required knowledge, skills, and education and compare them. Several I looked at had salaries for instance of a Senior position being comparable to that of lesser positions in government jobs in salary. Not only that, but the skill requirements for the jobs were often vague in their requirements with the private jobs being very specific and requiring extensive knowledge, training, experience, and education in the field of similar comparisons.
Obviously these comparisons aren't conclusive, even a simple number comparison between titles isn't going to provide clarification to either point.
My initial response to you is based on personal experience within smaller subsets of government and their hiring process and procedure to which I can personally attest to such poor habits and function. Certainly it isn't evidence of the status quot, yet there are many other factors of incident to which could draw support to my experience.
Though basing on my experience, government is beyond inefficient and often due to its process counterproductive to proper process. Not a smoking gun, nor a quantified statement, but then nor was yours.
Since we are going on anecdotal evidence, have you ever been through the hiring process for a federal job?
Just to get your foot in the door you have to jump through dozens of hoops. It's a very difficult and demanding experience. Why is that? B/c generally, the gov. hires only the best. I find these job ads anything but vague. They are detail-oriented as far as I can see.
What do you mean by '...most unemployment was frictional in nature'?
Look up the definition of frictional unemployment.
Did management have a part in the demise of the auto industry? Absolutely. But let's not minimize the part of organized labor. They drove wage and benefit costs to astronomical levels and wouldn't/couldn't improve productivity levels to exceed those of third-world laborers peforming the same low-skills tasks, which would've helped keep many of those jobs in the U.S.
Ask all of the laid-off workers from the auto, steel and textile industries how unions worked out for them in the end.
The better route to higher real wages is the government getting off it's hiney and laying the groundwork for sustained economic growth with little inflation. This is what we saw in the 90s, in spite of some of the excesses and faults that came with it. With an expanding economy and higher worker productivity, real wages and benefits increased because companies were stressed to retain quality employees. Most unemployment was frictional in nature.
I think that has more to do with corporate greed than anything. They'd rather pay someone in china $20 a month than someone in America $20 an hour.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckhorn
So you're blaming the failure of the car industry on unions? Wasn't it a mixture of bad management and the worldwide recession? Unions aren't immune to the performance of the economy.
Unions level the bargaining field. Management has to bargain in good faith or work does not get done. What's wrong with that?
In my opinion the best thing we can do is support the middle class. That's where labor comes from and that's what creates wealth. I'm tired of these economic elites who have ruined this country by killing off our production. It's a race to the bottom to put our wages on par with slave labor india and china or else the whole company moves for cheaper labor costs. Now that's globalization.
That's ok, we have new and innovative financial experts - hedge fund managers and bankers - creating all sorts of wealth. Why credit/default swaps were genius.
What do you mean by '...most unemployment was frictional in nature'?
We've known this for a while. Government jobs are now getting paid more than private industry.
This is sad since they are taking tax money and supposedly are "public servants" but are really public aristocrats.
There needs to be a major reduction in benefits and costs for gov't employees
Federal pay ahead of private industry - USATODAY.com (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm - broken link)
Even more galling:
These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Might want to do a little more research on this; more than a USA today article.
The overhead (benefits) include the cost to rent office space, utilities, copier costs, military staffing, cars, ttraining costs, federal building security, etc, etc, etc.
It would be much better if you looked at the entire picture and not pick and choose misrepresented data.
Overheads/benefits analysis was part of my job for years.
Well, I've been looking at and applying to various federal jobs. My observations: most are absolutely not paid more than the private sector, getting hired is difficult, etc.
I have found examples of extreme pay differences. For instance, I noticed and applied for (didn't get it BTW) a cook job paying $20+ an hour (true, it was a backcountry cooking job, pretty difficult). But overall, those are not typical. It seems to me the most overpaid and wasteful ones, are many unnecessary higher-ranking jobs that are rather redundant and could be eliminated. There's multiple agencies doing the same thing but each needing administration, etc.
I think that has more to do with corporate greed than anything. They'd rather pay someone in china $20 a month than someone in America $20 an hour.
When a Chinese worker is equal in productivity to an American worker but is willing to work for significantly less, yes, those jobs are going to move. And if you were in management, you would make that decision. If you didn't, the board would toss you.
Go back and closely read what I said. It's not just the labor cost. It's productivity, too. Union labor has wanted to get away with doing the same jobs without doing anything to improve its skills toward more higher-end manufacturing. It's been a path to nowhere for them, and while poor management does share a lot of the blame for the demise of certain industries in this country, unions need to look in the mirror as well.
No jealousy here. We've made a fortune from government worker incompetency. Actually there is a huge industry of support contractors to do much of the work for incompetent civil servants. But hey, live in your bubble, if you knew the industry you would know that the majority of civil servants are less than "the best" and often lacking motivation. There is a reason that the joke is "go government and retire the day you are hired."
Certainly not all Gov workers are lazy, but it is higher than the average, and because of preferences, certain people know that it is a great place to go for an easy ride. Take a look at any agency stuffed with low level bureaucrats and you'll see the obvious. There are always exceptions, but exceptions don't make the rule.
As far as the hiring process, it is convoluted and bureaucratic because it demands a large staff to support it, which is the way they want it.
There is little in the process that "picks the best", it is painfully obvious when you actually understand the process, especially if you work in the industry. The extra preferences to things like gender and skin color or even prior federal or military experience are quaint and provincial but usually have little to do with aptitude.
Last edited by GoldenZephyr; 03-05-2010 at 08:11 PM..
Its the governamnt contractors that have been over paid on governamnt contracts for years. Basically they get away with cost overruns and actually just plain cheating the government. That is well documented in congressional hearings. Take awwy governamnt contracts and see how much private employment drops.Many privte inductries like to talk about governamnt but when examined few can satnd the light of day and many rely on governamnt contracts for their basic bread and butter.There has been scandal after scandal of contractors and over vharges in just about evry agnecy that hires them.
mmm, yep, all those greeeeeeeeedy contractors. yet since the gov't doesn't every have to worry about staying in business, the waste there never even sees the light of day.
Yep, government, the most efficient, transparent business entity that ever existed. To hear some of you, you'd almost think it government was a deity or something. Wait, actually, to many on the left, gov't IS a deity.
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