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I'm slightly irritated at how many people have no problem with the salaries of every public employee in the state being public information, from groundskeepers

I'm slightly irritated at how many people have no problem with the salaries of every public employee in the state being public information, from groundskeepers to teachers, to head coaches, yet want to keep their own pay private. Many of us have lived with our salaries being public information for years. It's fine, it's not a big deal. In my experience, it does increase equality in compensation, and that's a good thing.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Are you including all benefits in that disclosure? Because that component is usually the highest of any public employee, and thats not usually disclosed. In fact, its by far the hardest to approximate by head. Defined benefit plans, platinum insurance plans, retirement pensions, vacations, loan forgiveness. All that comp is anything but transparent.
- runako 4y ago
  I have not worked for government, but I have looked at government job postings. And their benefit plans, vacation, etc. are surprisingly well-documented. > that component is usually the highest of any public employee This is not correct for most public employees. Depending on the employee, the ratio will be broadly similar to that of a private-sector employee doing a similar job. We don't look at companies with unlimited vacation time and assert that the vacation time is the largest part of their compensation, because it's unlimited. Similarly, we don't look at a pension in year 20, which often has less flexibility than a 401(k) and declare that the pension is somehow worth more than an equivalent 401(k) balance.
  - zone411 4y ago
    > This is not correct for most public employees. Depending on the employee, the ratio will be broadly similar to that of a private-sector employee doing a similar job. This is absolutely false. Participation in retirement benefits is 52% in private industry vs 82% in state and local government. Medical care and benefits is 47% vs 66% and the employee share of the premium is 22% vs 14%. Life insurance participation is 56% vs 81%. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf Benefit costs are 29.5% for private industry vs 38.3% for state and local governments. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf The difference is larger for federal jobs.
    - runako 4y ago
      > This is absolutely false. What's your source? So first, I was primarily responding to the claim that benefits are "usually the highest of any public employee," which is absolutely not the case. The insurance policies and retirement plans offered in the public sector are absolutely not more than the cash compensation of public employees. A state employee that has a gross cash compensation of $7k does not receive anything like $7k in insurance benefits monthly. "Depending on the employee" and "broadly similar". So 69% (private) vs. 92% (state & local gov't) have access to a retirement plan. Yes, that's broadly similar. But for the context of HN readers, who will skew towards "professional and related occupations, " the gap is only 8 points. (Looking at participation doesn't make sense when evaluating jobs because it evaluates what other people do versus what is on offer.) The calculation for medical and life insurance is similar. If you look more closely at the data, it will be obvious that the private sector numbers are dragged down by absolutely shitty jobs that don't pay well and have few benefits. In a sense, it's not reasonable to compare the pool of all private sector workers with state and local employees; the latter are dominated by "better" jobs that are better whether you have them in the public or private sector. In general, an engineering job comes with medical insurance whether that job is working for the state or Google. The other thing that comes out of this data is that we should obviously consider making it so that private sector jobs have a higher floor of benefits so that taxpayers don't have to be the safety net. Instead of wondering why government jobs have such great benefits (they don't, really), we should wonder why so many private sector jobs are dependent on taxpayers picking up the tab for e.g. food stamps for people with full-time employment in the private sector.
zone411 4y ago
You don't see the difference between salaries paid by taxpayers vs salaries paid by private companies? Why is equality in compensation good? Do you also think that all actors or chess players should be paid approximately the same?
- no_identd 4y ago
  Listen. If you support capitalism, you should support transparent wage information, or you implicitly disagree with Hayek's fundamental finding about markets as information processors. The markets can't process information they don't have, which makes our system something which we call capitalism, but which isn't capitalism. Kinda like we call what we should call A catenet THE Internet, despite it not deserving that name because the ARPANET people fucked up and lost a layer. (And no, I ain't an AnCap or Libertarian.)
- toiletfuneral 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- braingenious 4y ago
  Isn’t it pretty common for actors to be paid standard amounts through SAG and bigger actors having publicly-disclosed paydays?

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago

Are you including all benefits in that disclosure? Because that component is usually the highest of any public employee, and thats not usually disclosed. In fact, its by far the hardest to approximate by head. Defined benefit plans, platinum insurance plans, retirement pensions, vacations, loan forgiveness. All that comp is anything but transparent.

runako 4y ago
I have not worked for government, but I have looked at government job postings. And their benefit plans, vacation, etc. are surprisingly well-documented. > that component is usually the highest of any public employee This is not correct for most public employees. Depending on the employee, the ratio will be broadly similar to that of a private-sector employee doing a similar job. We don't look at companies with unlimited vacation time and assert that the vacation time is the largest part of their compensation, because it's unlimited. Similarly, we don't look at a pension in year 20, which often has less flexibility than a 401(k) and declare that the pension is somehow worth more than an equivalent 401(k) balance.
- zone411 4y ago
  > This is not correct for most public employees. Depending on the employee, the ratio will be broadly similar to that of a private-sector employee doing a similar job. This is absolutely false. Participation in retirement benefits is 52% in private industry vs 82% in state and local government. Medical care and benefits is 47% vs 66% and the employee share of the premium is 22% vs 14%. Life insurance participation is 56% vs 81%. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf Benefit costs are 29.5% for private industry vs 38.3% for state and local governments. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf The difference is larger for federal jobs.
  - runako 4y ago
    > This is absolutely false. What's your source? So first, I was primarily responding to the claim that benefits are "usually the highest of any public employee," which is absolutely not the case. The insurance policies and retirement plans offered in the public sector are absolutely not more than the cash compensation of public employees. A state employee that has a gross cash compensation of $7k does not receive anything like $7k in insurance benefits monthly. "Depending on the employee" and "broadly similar". So 69% (private) vs. 92% (state & local gov't) have access to a retirement plan. Yes, that's broadly similar. But for the context of HN readers, who will skew towards "professional and related occupations, " the gap is only 8 points. (Looking at participation doesn't make sense when evaluating jobs because it evaluates what other people do versus what is on offer.) The calculation for medical and life insurance is similar. If you look more closely at the data, it will be obvious that the private sector numbers are dragged down by absolutely shitty jobs that don't pay well and have few benefits. In a sense, it's not reasonable to compare the pool of all private sector workers with state and local employees; the latter are dominated by "better" jobs that are better whether you have them in the public or private sector. In general, an engineering job comes with medical insurance whether that job is working for the state or Google. The other thing that comes out of this data is that we should obviously consider making it so that private sector jobs have a higher floor of benefits so that taxpayers don't have to be the safety net. Instead of wondering why government jobs have such great benefits (they don't, really), we should wonder why so many private sector jobs are dependent on taxpayers picking up the tab for e.g. food stamps for people with full-time employment in the private sector.

zone411 4y ago

You don't see the difference between salaries paid by taxpayers vs salaries paid by private companies? Why is equality in compensation good? Do you also think that all actors or chess players should be paid approximately the same?

no_identd 4y ago
Listen. If you support capitalism, you should support transparent wage information, or you implicitly disagree with Hayek's fundamental finding about markets as information processors. The markets can't process information they don't have, which makes our system something which we call capitalism, but which isn't capitalism. Kinda like we call what we should call A catenet THE Internet, despite it not deserving that name because the ARPANET people fucked up and lost a layer. (And no, I ain't an AnCap or Libertarian.)
toiletfuneral 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
braingenious 4y ago
Isn’t it pretty common for actors to be paid standard amounts through SAG and bigger actors having publicly-disclosed paydays?