Public employee union membership in Wisconsin has crashed in the last year

[Brittain33]

The higher the cost of government services, the less the amount of services.

Not if salaries become so low as to be uncompetitive with the private section, in which case you get people not qualified to do their jobs.

[Brittain33]

The higher the cost of government services, the less the amount of services.

Not if salaries become so low as to be uncompetitive with the private section, in which case you get people not qualified to do their jobs.

True, but at the moment, public sector employees make about 40% more or something vis a vis private sector equivalents on average, with a lot more job security. When it flips the other way, get back to me.

Got a link?

[Brittain33]

It's funny how widely studies differ on this subject because of number massaging on both sides. Everything I've read says that public sector employees are dramatically underpaid compared to private sector employees based on their level of education.

Here's my recollection of what I read: at low levels of education, salaries are equivalent, but benefits make public employment a better deal. At higher levels of education, public service can't come close to competing with private sector employment. So jobs requiring good skills are tough to fill. Torie, I'm guessing you never considered becoming a public defender for the 40% higher salary.

[Brittain33]

Oh, and here is another one for federal employees. The USA Today article says that for federal employees, they make twice as much as the private sector equivalents.

It doesn't say equivalents - it says compared to private sector workers as a whole.

Given what federal agencies do and where they're located, we'd need to know education levels and cost of living. Washington D.C. is among the best-educated metros in the country for a good reason. The federal government has a lot of scientists, regulators, specialists, doctors, etc. The private sector has a mix of doctors, lawyers, burger flippers, and Wal*Mart greeters. Many of the federal government's employees live in places like Montgomery Co., Maryland where they could easily be snapped up by a private company at a higher salary. Despite Sen. Byrd's best efforts they aren't living in cheap cost-of-living private-sector metros like Kansas City or Fresno.

[Brittain33]

I just knew that you were going to ask that. Well here is one paper to look at.

That link says there's a big double-digit discrepancy, but when you factor out for education, it declines to single digits.

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This paper, put out by the Ohio Business Roundtable (do you think they have a dog in the hunt), also concludes that salaries are equal, but that public servants get better benefits. This is what I said originally. They also have greater job stability, which I don't think anyone would disagree with.

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Yes, there are always some people who make out like bandits. Nassau County police in N.Y. are another example. And we've heard about the public officials in Bell, California. Research the Quinn Bill in Massachusetts if you want to get your blood boiling. The question is, how representative is this of the average public employee? How much of it has to do with them starting out in high salary jurisdictions (what's the median house cost in Glendale, BTW) and then escalates with people abusing the system. These shock stories are good, they are corrective. But how illustrative are they?

CA may well be non-representative, too, as you said.

[Brittain33]

No, but in the private sector, some lawyers are far more equal than others. I fooled enough folks into thinking that I had skills that were worth paying $350 per hour for, and there were times when I was stuck in trial for a month (it was hell), where I billed about 300 hours in a month. What can I say? 

The DMV doesn't need Torie-quality employees to get the job done, but the SEC and federal courts might...