3 ms·

One of the nicer public data portals I've seen. I'm not surprised to see that salaries are the the most popular data set by far. I was working for a public age

One of the nicer public data portals I've seen. I'm not surprised to see that salaries are the the most popular data set by far. I was working for a public agency during the first year they made salary information readily available. There were two main types in the deluge of complaints: 1.) The significant others of people who had been lying about their income. 2.) People dripping with rage that 'uneducated' people (jobs that don't require a degree) were collecting 'outrageous' (lower middle-class) salaries.

rayiner 12y ago
Look at the sanitation department. These are probably the jobs that require the least education. General laborers seem to start at $40k. Sanitation laborers and truck drivers seem to mostly be in the $60-70k range. Foremen around $75k. Then look at the law department, which is probably the jobs with the most educational requirement. About $60k to start, going up to about $110k for supervisors who aren't top-level managers. Basically, people fortunate enough to be born with the aptitude for higher education get a 50% premium for their efforts. Seems pretty fair, at a high level.
- incision 12y ago
  >'Seems pretty fair, at a high level.' I would agree. What the experience above and others since evidenced to me is that quite a few people look at a degree as ticket - admission to a higher class. They see the people who manage to earn above their apparent class as frauds - stowaways who don't belong. People who are somehow gaming the system - stealing what degree holders are entitled to. I'm not sure what to make of it exactly. I'd guess it's an amalgamation of crushing student loan debt, the misleading marketing of college as a guarantee of prosperity and perhaps a socially acceptable facade for old-fashioned class/race discrimination.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- josephschmoe 12y ago
  >Basically, people fortunate enough to be born with the aptitude for higher education get a 50% premium for their efforts. That's an odd way to phrase that. There are plenty of people who are born with this aptitude who take different actions in life and plenty who never have the opportunity to use it for reasons other than aptitude.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jkimmel 12y ago
    >Basically, people fortunate enough to be born with the aptitude for higher education get a 50% premium for their efforts. I think a minor edit makes this statement more accurate: Basically, people who complete higher education get a 50% premium on their efforts in aggregate. Though as others have noted before, this level of analysis is in and of itself problematic. If top performers for multiple generations have entered the higher education system, it is difficult to separate out the confounded variables of natural ability, drive, and the "higher education premium" (so to speak). How do we necessarily know that college graduates are earning more due to their education, and not because the population of the most driven and/or most able individuals happens to go to college? It's a difficult problem. The only real viable suggestion I've heard is to compare earnings of individuals with similar pre-college academic performance who attended college to those who didn't. Most likely, these individuals would have to be on the threshold of collegiate entrance (by SAT, GPA, etc.), so perhaps even this analysis would not properly assess the benefit of college to high performing students.

rayiner 12y ago

Look at the sanitation department. These are probably the jobs that require the least education. General laborers seem to start at $40k. Sanitation laborers and truck drivers seem to mostly be in the $60-70k range. Foremen around $75k. Then look at the law department, which is probably the jobs with the most educational requirement. About $60k to start, going up to about $110k for supervisors who aren't top-level managers. Basically, people fortunate enough to be born with the aptitude for higher education get a 50% premium for their efforts. Seems pretty fair, at a high level.

incision 12y ago
>'Seems pretty fair, at a high level.' I would agree. What the experience above and others since evidenced to me is that quite a few people look at a degree as ticket - admission to a higher class. They see the people who manage to earn above their apparent class as frauds - stowaways who don't belong. People who are somehow gaming the system - stealing what degree holders are entitled to. I'm not sure what to make of it exactly. I'd guess it's an amalgamation of crushing student loan debt, the misleading marketing of college as a guarantee of prosperity and perhaps a socially acceptable facade for old-fashioned class/race discrimination.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
josephschmoe 12y ago
>Basically, people fortunate enough to be born with the aptitude for higher education get a 50% premium for their efforts. That's an odd way to phrase that. There are plenty of people who are born with this aptitude who take different actions in life and plenty who never have the opportunity to use it for reasons other than aptitude.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jkimmel 12y ago
  >Basically, people fortunate enough to be born with the aptitude for higher education get a 50% premium for their efforts. I think a minor edit makes this statement more accurate: Basically, people who complete higher education get a 50% premium on their efforts in aggregate. Though as others have noted before, this level of analysis is in and of itself problematic. If top performers for multiple generations have entered the higher education system, it is difficult to separate out the confounded variables of natural ability, drive, and the "higher education premium" (so to speak). How do we necessarily know that college graduates are earning more due to their education, and not because the population of the most driven and/or most able individuals happens to go to college? It's a difficult problem. The only real viable suggestion I've heard is to compare earnings of individuals with similar pre-college academic performance who attended college to those who didn't. Most likely, these individuals would have to be on the threshold of collegiate entrance (by SAT, GPA, etc.), so perhaps even this analysis would not properly assess the benefit of college to high performing students.