

Federal workers earning $150,000 or more has risen tenfold in past five years - chailatte
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/11/13/2010-11-13_the_fat_of_the_land.html

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ENOTTY
They should really compare industry to industry to see if the pay with
benefits are similar.

For example, with all these new regulations on the financial industry, how are
you going to attract financial professionals to government service to enforce
these regulations. If they're making 5 figures in government while their
classmates are making 6 or 7 figures in the private sector, would it be really
surprising if we can't find enough smart and savvy financial cops?

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percept
Heavily slanted. Some points from the source article:

"workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce" (the original
headline was "More federal workers' pay" which paints a different mental
picture).

"The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the
government for 15 to 24 years"

"Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and
elsewhere earn an average of $179,500"

IT in particular is poorly compensated when compared to the private sector. In
fact the government would be better off hiring large numbers at private
sector-level salaries instead of outsourcing to private contractors at huge
markups (Robert Gates made the same point with regard to defense contracting).

But the forces aligned against "stunning" federal pay aren't likely to oppose
continued outsourcing.

They're also carefully carving the pie to exclude federal defense workers:

"Freeze federal salaries for three years, with the exception of defense
paychecks."

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makecheck
It sounds ridiculous on the surface, but at least consider cost of living. You
can't compare salaries without knowing where the people are. Assuming they are
mostly in DC, how expensive is that compared to other parts of the country?

~~~
percept
Ridiculously expensive.

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kevinpet
I think we need to chop government worker pay severely, but I don't like the
misleading way this headline frames the problem. That is -- I think others may
correctly point out that this is a very odd metric to quote, and hence people
must need to fudge the numbers to argue the case. The more accurate is what
Rand Paul just said -- federal total compensation averages $120k vs. $60k for
private sector. The only subtlety there is total compensation including
benefits vs. salary.

The problem with those making more than X has increased by Y is that you can
always generate extreme numbers by choosing X appropriately. Imagine there was
a large subset of our all-knowing overlords making $145k five years ago. Maybe
this was the cap for some particular level in the hierarchy. Now assume they
got a 5% raise. Bam, huge increase in number of feds making over $150k. True,
but misleading.

If you want subtlety, there are studies out there comparing apples to apples
(since federal employees are skewed towards professionals) and still finds
massive pay differences.

