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Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

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Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#151

Post by jshen »

houseabsolute wrote: post #145
jbooth wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberals don't claim that the government should renege on a contract that was lawfully entered into with a military contractor. In fact, nobody claims that, ever. Yet whenever local budgets are crunched, we always hear about how greedy the municipal workers are. You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? I've negotiated union deals from the government side. I negotiated fairly, in good faith, and nobody at…

> You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. ( http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655 ). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland. I can't speak to highway workers.

My wife happens to be a teacher in L.A. (not lausd). Her entry level salary was barely 40k and she is now in the 50k range after 6 years. I'm a programmer with less education, less years of experience, and I make more than double what she makes. If they are getting a posh deal I sure as hell don't see it.

But, neither of our single data points says anything about the situation. I'm assuming most people on here took statistics and understand that both are meaningless. We need the average, and the standard deviation at a minimum to say anything meaningful.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#152

Post by patrickgzill »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #54
dantheman wrote: post #29

He got that exactly right, unfortunately he didn't go far enough -- debt financed projects are also a huge problem. Look at the big dig & the mbta. People need to learn that you pay as you go, that's why 401ks are great the total cost of an employee is understood completely. Taking debt in someone else's name, which is what essentially all government debt is, is fundamentally immoral and shouldn't be allowed. It caus…

Interesting point about taking debt in someone else's name. Over the last year I've begun to wonder if people aren't going to start feeling like the deal is off. If granddad elected somebody who made so much of a debt obligation that my taxes can't fix the roads? Why does granddad get to leave me his debt? He's not even around anymore. How can dead people vote to make living people 100 years later poor? In some ways…

Lysander Spooner wrote about some of these ideas - that the Constitution was only in effect for those who were living at the time, and did those folks then mean for it to be binding on everyone else in perpetuity? -- as one example of his thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#153

Post by mkramlich »

kenjackson wrote: post #150
mkramlich wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what sorts of roles do those 100+ people have, that you say make more than $1M/year? I have guesses but want to learn specifics.

Depends on the person. Obviously Gates and Sergey have a visionary/uber-architect role. Others like Sweeney, Cutler and Carmack are hairy-chested devs who checkin just as much code, if not more, than your typical senior dev. And of course there's the gamut in-between. And for a lot of these people, they don't even consider it a lot of money. I had a friend who made $10M after an IPO. I asked how it felt and he said,…

oh I thought you knew them personally. regardless, yeah sounds like the common thread among the guys you cited is that they all were founders/owners of a company. That's generally the sense I've gotten, if you want your ceiling to be $100-200k/year, work for somebody else. But if you want your ceiling to be millions or billions, you have to be a founder/owner.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#154

Post by whyenot »

houseabsolute wrote: post #145
jbooth wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberals don't claim that the government should renege on a contract that was lawfully entered into with a military contractor. In fact, nobody claims that, ever. Yet whenever local budgets are crunched, we always hear about how greedy the municipal workers are. You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? I've negotiated union deals from the government side. I negotiated fairly, in good faith, and nobody at…

> You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. ( http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655 ). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland. I can't speak to highway workers.

Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live.

They work in a city where it's difficult to buy a home for less than a million dollars. Contrary to your assertion, further highly specialized education beyond a bachelor's degree is required to be a police officer (hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Police_Department... ). Also contrary to your assertion, it appears starting pay is no higher in Oakland than SF (hint: http://www.opdjobs.com/ ). They perform a very important service and risk their lives doing it. They deserve every cent IMO.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#155

Post by houseabsolute »

jshen wrote: post #151
houseabsolute wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. ( http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655 ). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland. I can't speak to highway workers.

My wife happens to be a teacher in L.A. (not lausd). Her entry level salary was barely 40k and she is now in the 50k range after 6 years. I'm a programmer with less education, less years of experience, and I make more than double what she makes. If they are getting a posh deal I sure as hell don't see it. But, neither of our single data points says anything about the situation. I'm assuming most people on here took s…

> If they are getting a posh deal I sure as hell don't see it.

We were talking about policemen and road workers, but now that you mention teachers, we can talk about them too. Among other things, it's almost impossible for them to get fired and their raises don't seem to be connected to performance. They also get to take three months off during the summer, bringing their annualized salary up to about 70k. If you throw their pension plans into the mix, it is actually very profitable compared to most employment pursuits available to liberal arts majors.

Also, it's hard to compare the deal they are getting versus the one you are getting, because unlike yours, the price on teachers' labor is not set in a market environment. You might also say that the labor of a construction worker or fast food cook is more back-breaking and intensive than yours, but ultimately that is not the criterion on which wages are decided. The same goes for level of education and experience. None of these are the sole factors that determine what an individual's labor is worth.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#156

Post by houseabsolute »

whyenot wrote: post #154
houseabsolute wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. ( http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655 ). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland. I can't speak to highway workers.

Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. They work in a city where it's difficult to buy a home for less than a million dollars. Contrary to your assertion, further highly specialized education beyond a bachelor's degree is required to be a police officer (hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Police_Department... ). Also contrary to your assertion, it appears starting pay is no higher in Oakland th…

> They work in a city where it's difficult to buy a home for less than a million dollars.

Yet Starbucks baristas still get paid the same as anywhere else (modulo some minor cost of living adjustments) and don't get to retire at 50 with 90% of their last year's income (which should be a good deal more than the starting salary).

> further highly specialized education beyond a bachelor's degree

You should say "separate from," since all that is required to join is a high school diploma: http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1646. Then, I suppose, you must attend police academy, but it's not clear from your links exactly how much time you have to spend there. Given that the mayor cancelled two thirds of their classes, either the force must have cut hiring by 66% or those classes are not required for all kinds of police duty. That "hint" bit was rude, I should know since I troll occasionally too, but you'd be better off avoiding it if you want people to listen to you.

> Also contrary to your assertion, it appears starting pay is no higher in Oakland than SF.

I believe my claim was about overall pay, not starting pay, for Oakland. That said, I don't have numbers to back that up. I can only say, "I heard it from Michael Krasny on Forum." Being that he seems to lean left, I don't see any reason for him to exaggerate the pay of unionized government workers, but it's possible he got it wrong or I am not remembering correctly.

> They perform a very important service and risk their lives doing it. They deserve every cent IMO.

Being a policeman is not really that risky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_officer#Line_of_duty_dea.... Pizza drivers are at greater risk of death and you don't see them getting paid six figures for their work. Politicians beholden to unions is a much better explanation. I do believe they deserve to get paid something, but I don't think their jobs are so hard that they should have money thrown at them the way they do.

It's fine for you to "feel" the way you do, but to my eyes you haven't provided much rational justification for it.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#157

Post by vishaldpatel »

pg wrote: post #20

I have a feeling these graphs do more to explain the problems that Berkeley professor wrote about ( http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/08/24/a-letter-to-my-students... ) than the explanations he proposed.

Found this in the comments to that prof's blog post: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36538677/1004-Bbg-Professors-and-P...

Basically, yes - pensions are a problem. But the graph on the number of California gov't employees that lost their jobs vs. private sector employees may be misleading because we _need_ the public sector employees to service basic needs in the state, and California employs one of the lowest number of public sector employees per capita of any state.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#158

Post by ghshephard »

btilly wrote: post #138
robryan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I knew it would be bonds, just seemed like a risky proposition. I guess any responsible economic action here isn't going to be popular so it's not going to happen? Hypothetically what would happen if the state decided to reform these pensions, slashing them right back to something they could realistically afford?

The fundamental problem is that a large amount of possible government action is hampered by a constitutional rule that says that 60% of the house has to agree on any budget. Structurally neither party has the power to get to 60% of the state legislature, voting for taxes is political suicide for Republicans, and voting to cut benefits is political suicide for Democrats. So we have permanent deadlock with no attempted…

s/60% of the house/66% of the house/

From: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_4

Const., Art. IV, Sec. 12 actually stipulates

" (d) No bill except the budget bill may contain more than one item of appropriation, and that for one certain, expressed purpose. Appropriations from the General Fund of the State, except appropriations for the public schools, are void unless passed in each house by rollcall vote entered in the journal, two-thirds of the membership concurring."

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#159

Post by jbooth »

houseabsolute wrote: post #155
jshen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife happens to be a teacher in L.A. (not lausd). Her entry level salary was barely 40k and she is now in the 50k range after 6 years. I'm a programmer with less education, less years of experience, and I make more than double what she makes. If they are getting a posh deal I sure as hell don't see it. But, neither of our single data points says anything about the situation. I'm assuming most people on here took s…

> If they are getting a posh deal I sure as hell don't see it. We were talking about policemen and road workers, but now that you mention teachers, we can talk about them too. Among other things, it's almost impossible for them to get fired and their raises don't seem to be connected to performance. They also get to take three months off during the summer, bringing their annualized salary up to about 70k. If you thro…

If they have such a great deal, why aren't you a teacher?

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#160

Post by houseabsolute »

jbooth wrote: post #159
houseabsolute wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are getting a posh deal I sure as hell don't see it. We were talking about policemen and road workers, but now that you mention teachers, we can talk about them too. Among other things, it's almost impossible for them to get fired and their raises don't seem to be connected to performance. They also get to take three months off during the summer, bringing their annualized salary up to about 70k. If you thro…

If they have such a great deal, why aren't you a teacher?

Different people have different tolerance for risk, different preferences for activity, different sets of cultivated skills etc. Mine line up better with programming than teaching, and I can make more doing it to boot.

Earlier, you were claiming that teachers are getting a raw deal because you are paid so much better as a programmer. To put the previous paragraph in completely unambiguous terms, let me ask you this: "If programming is so great, why isn't your wife working as a programmer?" Does that really sound like a reasonable or relevant question to you?

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