6 ms·

In California many/most public employees earn over 6-figures in total compensation. This includes government employees, teachers, police, Fire, etc. Yea, it’s

In California many/most public employees earn over 6-figures in total compensation. This includes government employees, teachers, police, Fire, etc. Yea, it’s insane. Don’t believe me? Look it up - https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2017 https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2017

twblalock 9y ago
If you want good people, you need to compensate them, and you need to compensate them relative to the high cost of living in California. Otherwise, the good people will stay in the private sector and government jobs will be filled by people who couldn't succeed in the private sector. That's happening to some extent already, but there are a lot of people who would do very well in the private sector who choose public service. For society's sake, we don't want that to be such a big sacrifice that nobody smart would do it.
- scarface74 9y ago
  So compensate them by paying them more now instead of taking the easy way out through pensions and bad math.
  - twblalock 9y ago
    I'm all in favor of that, but good luck raising taxes enough to make that possible.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      So it's either raise taxes now or raise taxes later.
dragonwriter 9y ago
That source has obvious serious data quality issues, which are dramatically evident if you filter by “University System”; the three highest paid entries with that filter, which are the same person [0], three times with the same job title and slightly different total comp figures. The same person appears twice more on the first page, too, with significantly different pay (but the same title, etc.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_L._Mora https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_L._Mora
humanrebar 9y ago
Police and fire fighters are doing very hazardous work. Teachers tend to have postgraduate degrees. All can be living in high cost-of-living areas where $100k doesn't go as far as people think. "Government employees" could be running departments or administering budgets that would be director-level positions in a private corporation. But, yeah, it seems like too much to pay $600k per year for checking that applicants correctly filled in the phone number on their 124-J forms. But I'm not sure it's always that clear cut.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I posted this earlier, but police work statistically isn't that dangerous. There are about 421,000 police officers in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enforcement-officers-in-the-us/#0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf... If you look past Fox News sensationalist headlines, they said 146 were killed in the line of duty last year. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/11/americas-police-officers-are-still-operating-in-dangerous-times.html http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/11/americas-police-of...
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Those numbers might seem low to you, but that easily puts police officer in the top 25 most dangerous jobs according to this source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/workplace-fatalities-25-most-dangerous-jobs-america/1002500001 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/work...
    - scarface74 9y ago
      From the article: The most common cause of death on the job were intentional shootings, which claimed the lives of 46 officers last year. Almost as many officers died in car accidents. Only 46 actually died from intentional shootings.
      - humanrebar 9y ago

twblalock 9y ago

If you want good people, you need to compensate them, and you need to compensate them relative to the high cost of living in California. Otherwise, the good people will stay in the private sector and government jobs will be filled by people who couldn't succeed in the private sector. That's happening to some extent already, but there are a lot of people who would do very well in the private sector who choose public service. For society's sake, we don't want that to be such a big sacrifice that nobody smart would do it.

scarface74 9y ago
So compensate them by paying them more now instead of taking the easy way out through pensions and bad math.
- twblalock 9y ago
  I'm all in favor of that, but good luck raising taxes enough to make that possible.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    So it's either raise taxes now or raise taxes later.

dragonwriter 9y ago

That source has obvious serious data quality issues, which are dramatically evident if you filter by “University System”; the three highest paid entries with that filter, which are the same person [0], three times with the same job title and slightly different total comp figures. The same person appears twice more on the first page, too, with significantly different pay (but the same title, etc.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_L._Mora https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_L._Mora

humanrebar 9y ago

Police and fire fighters are doing very hazardous work. Teachers tend to have postgraduate degrees. All can be living in high cost-of-living areas where $100k doesn't go as far as people think. "Government employees" could be running departments or administering budgets that would be director-level positions in a private corporation. But, yeah, it seems like too much to pay $600k per year for checking that applicants correctly filled in the phone number on their 124-J forms. But I'm not sure it's always that clear cut.

scarface74 9y ago
I posted this earlier, but police work statistically isn't that dangerous. There are about 421,000 police officers in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enforcement-officers-in-the-us/#0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf... If you look past Fox News sensationalist headlines, they said 146 were killed in the line of duty last year. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/11/americas-police-officers-are-still-operating-in-dangerous-times.html http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/11/americas-police-of...
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Those numbers might seem low to you, but that easily puts police officer in the top 25 most dangerous jobs according to this source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/workplace-fatalities-25-most-dangerous-jobs-america/1002500001 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/work...
  - scarface74 9y ago
    From the article: The most common cause of death on the job were intentional shootings, which claimed the lives of 46 officers last year. Almost as many officers died in car accidents. Only 46 actually died from intentional shootings.
    - humanrebar 9y ago