9 ms·

Well, part of that deal is delayed pay, because the public sector pays a great deal less. Without this, you're going to get menial and do-littles in public serv

by kefka 10y ago

Well, part of that deal is delayed pay, because the public sector pays a great deal less. Without this, you're going to get menial and do-littles in public service. ... Which the more I think about it, perhaps is the reason why they want to, so the Republicans can look at their bad performance and cut funds further. (Don't get me wrong, Democrats seems to like throwing money down holes for populous programs, which have their own set of regressive issues. I'm much for UBI, and scientific testing of laws and programs to determine if the benefit is actually helping. If not, eliminate and move it to help more, better.) If you cut funds by what you can, and then blame them for bad performance, you can "punish them" with less money, getting even worse. Wash, rinse, repeat, until that program is effectively dead. We're seeing it in the schools right now, with "No Child Left Behind" and the similar takes across the country with it. Inner city schools have bad performance, primarily because of bad home life, poverty, lack of food and resources... But because they do bad for tests, they get less funds. I always think, what would our system look like if we adequately funded our programs? Would the BMV be such a cesspool? Not hardly. Would dealing with government office be peachy? Well, no. But they would have quick serving times and adequate material and time response in larger issues. Instead, what I hear is "They're bad, so lets cut funding." which exasperates the problem by now cutting personnel, time, and physical resources.

arielweisberg 10y ago
I am not sure public sector work pays less than equivalent private sector work on the whole. I don't know for certain either way. My unsubstantiated belief was that it was higher and sometimes significantly so especially taking into account benefits, vacation time, and overtime policies. So citation needed.
- bittercynic 10y ago
  I don't have an answer as to who pays more for equivalent work, but I don't think that is the only important question. Suppose a bright young person has the skills to be a great elementary school teacher and to be a software engineer. If being a teacher is known to lead to a life of poverty, then few people who have options will choose teaching. If the only people who teach are those with no other options, then we have a problem. If you need effective people to make your organization function, you have to compete for them, and not just within your industry.
- kefka 10y ago
  Admittedly, I found hundreds of resources. Half of them said that "Private Makes More". The other half said "Public Makes More". The ones that said that Private makes more, usually added in commentary about Right-to-Work states, and discussed unions, whereas "Public Makes More" discussed the excesses and governmental waste, and evils of taxes. I'm sure you can see a trend of biases here. Attacking Private was Democrats and Left leaning orgs. Attacking Public was Republicans and Right leaning orgs. The best, most impartial was from a reddit posting (https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_private_sector_work_still_generally_pay_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_pr... ) asking specifically about engineering pay between public and private. Of course, by the very definition they are anecdotal. But they seemed to try to answer "What is better monetarily and compensation-wise, rather than bringing in socio-politics in its stead.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    The third possibility that is curiously rarely considered by so called 'market' advocates is that it might be a competitive market and both groups are offered more or less equally attractive compensation packages.
    - kefka 10y ago
      I would think a way to discern this, is that absolute cash in hand, private makes more. Public, if you add in the non-cash benefits, makes more. The argument however, of what I was making, is that if attrition destroys the understood contract of the non-cash benefits, Public would make significantly less and be less able to attract good talent. We are already seeing that with regards to K-12 teaching profession in many states. I was asked to cite sources; kindly at that after respectful disagreement. After some searching, determined that answering that was going to be extremely partisan, and refused to answer the question at hand of "citation needed". And your suggested answer seems to be what the hordes on reddit kind of, not really, sort of agreed to. In the end, even on reddit, it was back and forth 50% one way, and the other.
    - wahern 10y ago
      It should be expected (and the common wisdom) is that government jobs pay less than comparative work in the private sector, all else being equal. That's because government jobs are protected by the constitution. Courts have said that government employees have a property interest in their employment such that the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments attach. Firing and even laying people off is much more costly in the public sector because the government has to follow and document detailed procedures when firing or even reprimanding employees. The legal burden is on the government to show legality, whereas in at-will private sector employment the burden is on the employee to show illegality. It's a _huge_ difference. Also, there tends to be much less funding and employment volatility in the public sector. The [theoretical] ability to increase taxes, and favored rates on municipal bonds, make it easier to cover short-term gaps in funding jobs. Therefore, given the relative job security, we should expect public employees to make less than their private sector counterparts. In practice, though, it's more difficult to assess. In almost all states large segments of public sector employment operate basically as a jobs program--for various disadvantaged groups (i.e. blue collar worker without a college degree, minorities, etc). And part of the reason is because similar blue collar jobs in the private sector have disappeared. That makes comparing income difficult. At the other end of the scale, highly skilled people likely value job security much less. That means there's more pressure to increase salaries to attract those individuals. EDIT (append): Also, at the federal level there exists a relatively unknown non-partisan equilibrium / agreement in Congress that has capped the federal civil service. The number of federal civil service employees has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s.[1] The huge growth in discretionary federal spending has been funneled into out-sourcing. Huge swaths of the "private" economy are basically federal jobs programs. Firing is much easier, but executives and shareholders get to skim cream from the top. The whole dynamic really confounds everything. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
- kobeya 10y ago
  I've worked in the public sector. It often pays better with better working conditions and better benefits (even excluding the pension) than private sector jobs. It just doesn't compare well to Silicon Valley tech standards, which is an entirely unreasonable comparison to make.
- walshemj 10y ago
  You don't get share options for one and you haven to take pensions fund valuations with a very big pinch of salt as both sides have interests here. As long as you have a steady state of members joining at the base DB schemes some of the more extreme cases are very unlikely and would require for example losing 100% of the deferred scheme members overnight.
- vondur 10y ago
  Public sector usually pays less, but the benefits tend to make it about equal to the private sector. (Health and Retirement)
parennoob 10y ago
> I always think, what would our system look like if we adequately funded our programs? Would the DMV be such a cesspool? I suggest looking at the article's interactive graph. It tells me that > DMV managers with at least 30 years' service earn an average yearly pension of $51,572. And they are eligible to retire at 55. Now I don't vouch for the veracity of any of those numbers, but assuming they are somewhat accurate – $55,000/yr for life for 30 years of work (assuming you start at 25) sounds like pretty good funding to me.
- mywittyname 10y ago
  > $55,000/yr for life for 30 years of work (assuming you start at 25) sounds like pretty good funding to me. It would take about $2MM to earn that yearly in dividends from an S&P500 index fund, which is more than they would have earned in salary over that time. Let that sink in for a second and you'll release how screwed up this system is. These people would need a 80-100% match to have an equivalently valued 401k after 30 years of service. No sane company would offer that.
  - ec109685 10y ago
    Another way to look at it would be that DMV managers make the equivalent of $100k at a private sector job, which isn't likely that far fetched.
gaius 10y ago
Well, part of that deal is delayed pay, because the public sector pays a great deal less Not true in the UK at least http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/11152840/Public-vs-private-sector-pay-gap-is-5000-or-a-fifth-of-earnings.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/... The issue is that private sector pay fluctuates with the economy, but public sector ratchets ever upwards come rain or shine.
- walshemj 10y ago
  lol have you seen how little relative to inflation public sector pay has gone up in the last few years
  - gaius 10y ago
    More than private...
crdoconnor 10y ago
>Without this, you're going to get menial and do-littles in public service Ruining the public service is usually part of the plan since that helps build the case for privatization.
mywittyname 10y ago
> the public sector pays a great deal less. CHP officers often make $100-200k per year. Their salaries are public record. There's a middle ground to be had between six-figure salaries for 30 years followed by a windfall valued at ~$5MM, and creating punitive incentives. If they want to provide delayed incentives, then a generous 401k contribution with a very long vesting schedule will suffice. But current pension systems are completely broken. The pension system should only pay out a fraction of earnings and distribute that amount based on "shares" owned of the pension. Shares are earned by paying into the system.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  CHP officers are not, either in salary or retirement, typical public employees.
- ec109685 10y ago
  401k's are a bad deal because employees are at the mercy of the stock market at the time of retirement. Pensions should be able to smooth out ups and downs of investments better than a private 401k.
  - smileysteve 10y ago
    What do you think pension funds invest in? Also, with 401ks, you can invest in anything from small cap / developing world stocks, s&p 500s, large cap dividends, private bonds, public bonds, and U.S. treasury bonds.
    - ec109685 10y ago
      Pensions have an unlimited time horizon, while personal 401ks don't. Yeah, you could put the money in more conservative investments, but you still as an indivisible bare the brunt of the risk.
      - smileysteve 10y ago
        If you have a large group of people commencing to draw down your fund, your time horizon can be quite short. Similarly, if you have future workers not in the program, you can't "pyramid scheme" it. 20 years of investing are required for most classic pensions and the CHP example workers are likely to have as many or more years than that. An appropriate age based fund (which would admittedly, likely have huge fees) would reduce risk of the money you'd be drawing down on in the next 10 years.

by kefka 10y ago

arielweisberg 10y ago

I am not sure public sector work pays less than equivalent private sector work on the whole. I don't know for certain either way. My unsubstantiated belief was that it was higher and sometimes significantly so especially taking into account benefits, vacation time, and overtime policies. So citation needed.

bittercynic 10y ago
I don't have an answer as to who pays more for equivalent work, but I don't think that is the only important question. Suppose a bright young person has the skills to be a great elementary school teacher and to be a software engineer. If being a teacher is known to lead to a life of poverty, then few people who have options will choose teaching. If the only people who teach are those with no other options, then we have a problem. If you need effective people to make your organization function, you have to compete for them, and not just within your industry.
kefka 10y ago
Admittedly, I found hundreds of resources. Half of them said that "Private Makes More". The other half said "Public Makes More". The ones that said that Private makes more, usually added in commentary about Right-to-Work states, and discussed unions, whereas "Public Makes More" discussed the excesses and governmental waste, and evils of taxes. I'm sure you can see a trend of biases here. Attacking Private was Democrats and Left leaning orgs. Attacking Public was Republicans and Right leaning orgs. The best, most impartial was from a reddit posting (https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_private_sector_work_still_generally_pay_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/314v7b/does_pr... ) asking specifically about engineering pay between public and private. Of course, by the very definition they are anecdotal. But they seemed to try to answer "What is better monetarily and compensation-wise, rather than bringing in socio-politics in its stead.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  The third possibility that is curiously rarely considered by so called 'market' advocates is that it might be a competitive market and both groups are offered more or less equally attractive compensation packages.
  - kefka 10y ago
    I would think a way to discern this, is that absolute cash in hand, private makes more. Public, if you add in the non-cash benefits, makes more. The argument however, of what I was making, is that if attrition destroys the understood contract of the non-cash benefits, Public would make significantly less and be less able to attract good talent. We are already seeing that with regards to K-12 teaching profession in many states. I was asked to cite sources; kindly at that after respectful disagreement. After some searching, determined that answering that was going to be extremely partisan, and refused to answer the question at hand of "citation needed". And your suggested answer seems to be what the hordes on reddit kind of, not really, sort of agreed to. In the end, even on reddit, it was back and forth 50% one way, and the other.
  - wahern 10y ago
    It should be expected (and the common wisdom) is that government jobs pay less than comparative work in the private sector, all else being equal. That's because government jobs are protected by the constitution. Courts have said that government employees have a property interest in their employment such that the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments attach. Firing and even laying people off is much more costly in the public sector because the government has to follow and document detailed procedures when firing or even reprimanding employees. The legal burden is on the government to show legality, whereas in at-will private sector employment the burden is on the employee to show illegality. It's a _huge_ difference. Also, there tends to be much less funding and employment volatility in the public sector. The [theoretical] ability to increase taxes, and favored rates on municipal bonds, make it easier to cover short-term gaps in funding jobs. Therefore, given the relative job security, we should expect public employees to make less than their private sector counterparts. In practice, though, it's more difficult to assess. In almost all states large segments of public sector employment operate basically as a jobs program--for various disadvantaged groups (i.e. blue collar worker without a college degree, minorities, etc). And part of the reason is because similar blue collar jobs in the private sector have disappeared. That makes comparing income difficult. At the other end of the scale, highly skilled people likely value job security much less. That means there's more pressure to increase salaries to attract those individuals. EDIT (append): Also, at the federal level there exists a relatively unknown non-partisan equilibrium / agreement in Congress that has capped the federal civil service. The number of federal civil service employees has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s.[1] The huge growth in discretionary federal spending has been funneled into out-sourcing. Huge swaths of the "private" economy are basically federal jobs programs. Firing is much easier, but executives and shareholders get to skim cream from the top. The whole dynamic really confounds everything. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
kobeya 10y ago
I've worked in the public sector. It often pays better with better working conditions and better benefits (even excluding the pension) than private sector jobs. It just doesn't compare well to Silicon Valley tech standards, which is an entirely unreasonable comparison to make.
walshemj 10y ago
You don't get share options for one and you haven to take pensions fund valuations with a very big pinch of salt as both sides have interests here. As long as you have a steady state of members joining at the base DB schemes some of the more extreme cases are very unlikely and would require for example losing 100% of the deferred scheme members overnight.
vondur 10y ago
Public sector usually pays less, but the benefits tend to make it about equal to the private sector. (Health and Retirement)

parennoob 10y ago

> I always think, what would our system look like if we adequately funded our programs? Would the DMV be such a cesspool? I suggest looking at the article's interactive graph. It tells me that > DMV managers with at least 30 years' service earn an average yearly pension of $51,572. And they are eligible to retire at 55. Now I don't vouch for the veracity of any of those numbers, but assuming they are somewhat accurate – $55,000/yr for life for 30 years of work (assuming you start at 25) sounds like pretty good funding to me.

mywittyname 10y ago
> $55,000/yr for life for 30 years of work (assuming you start at 25) sounds like pretty good funding to me. It would take about $2MM to earn that yearly in dividends from an S&P500 index fund, which is more than they would have earned in salary over that time. Let that sink in for a second and you'll release how screwed up this system is. These people would need a 80-100% match to have an equivalently valued 401k after 30 years of service. No sane company would offer that.
- ec109685 10y ago
  Another way to look at it would be that DMV managers make the equivalent of $100k at a private sector job, which isn't likely that far fetched.

gaius 10y ago

Well, part of that deal is delayed pay, because the public sector pays a great deal less Not true in the UK at least http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/11152840/Public-vs-private-sector-pay-gap-is-5000-or-a-fifth-of-earnings.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/... The issue is that private sector pay fluctuates with the economy, but public sector ratchets ever upwards come rain or shine.

walshemj 10y ago
lol have you seen how little relative to inflation public sector pay has gone up in the last few years
- gaius 10y ago
  More than private...

crdoconnor 10y ago

>Without this, you're going to get menial and do-littles in public service Ruining the public service is usually part of the plan since that helps build the case for privatization.

mywittyname 10y ago

> the public sector pays a great deal less. CHP officers often make $100-200k per year. Their salaries are public record. There's a middle ground to be had between six-figure salaries for 30 years followed by a windfall valued at ~$5MM, and creating punitive incentives. If they want to provide delayed incentives, then a generous 401k contribution with a very long vesting schedule will suffice. But current pension systems are completely broken. The pension system should only pay out a fraction of earnings and distribute that amount based on "shares" owned of the pension. Shares are earned by paying into the system.

dragonwriter 10y ago
CHP officers are not, either in salary or retirement, typical public employees.
ec109685 10y ago
401k's are a bad deal because employees are at the mercy of the stock market at the time of retirement. Pensions should be able to smooth out ups and downs of investments better than a private 401k.
- smileysteve 10y ago
  What do you think pension funds invest in? Also, with 401ks, you can invest in anything from small cap / developing world stocks, s&p 500s, large cap dividends, private bonds, public bonds, and U.S. treasury bonds.
  - ec109685 10y ago
    Pensions have an unlimited time horizon, while personal 401ks don't. Yeah, you could put the money in more conservative investments, but you still as an indivisible bare the brunt of the risk.
    - smileysteve 10y ago
      If you have a large group of people commencing to draw down your fund, your time horizon can be quite short. Similarly, if you have future workers not in the program, you can't "pyramid scheme" it. 20 years of investing are required for most classic pensions and the CHP example workers are likely to have as many or more years than that. An appropriate age based fund (which would admittedly, likely have huge fees) would reduce risk of the money you'd be drawing down on in the next 10 years.