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Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

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Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#31

Post by nknighthb »

dxhdr wrote: post #28
nknighthb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?

> More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve? No kidding, this is highly skilled labor we're talking about. Not to mention the years of schooling and study required to excel at the profession. These jobs aren't easy to fill.

Are you willing to do the work? And who cares if it's highly skilled? Isn't price decoupled from cost? If you're going to argue from a capitalist perspective, be consistent.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#32

Post by 3825 »

cjensen wrote: post #15

This is a good lesson for those of us making programs who "need" to charge a certain price in order to make a living. There is something in the human psyche that really wants to make a connection between the price of an item and the living conditions of the seller or the buyer. The lesson is this: the Law of Supply and Demand is not interested in your rationalizations or ad-hoc reasoning about "fair" pricing. In this…

As Shirley says:

> For another, what does 80k really mean? Is it the average of their base salaries or their total costs of employment? And who are included in this average? Certainly, if management salaries are included, it'd unreasonably skew the data!

I am concerned why there are 217 people in management. I am sure we can find some other people who will work in management for less. Fire the management!

If it were up to me, I'd stick to the BART compensation for everyone but the utility workers and increase their base by about 1k over current BART proposal. I'd make up for that by cutting down on management costs. I would not necessarily decrease pay outside of those with corporate title but they have to start letting some of the people in management go. My goal would be to reduce the number of management employees from 217 to 150 by the end of 2014. Nobody needs 17% of their workforce to be in management. Trim that fat.

I don't have much confidence in either the unions or the management to do their job. I bet everyone involved is very glad that I don't run BART.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#33

Post by nknighthb »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #27
nknighthb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?

Yeah, unskilled, replaceable labor doesn't get paid much. That is how it always has been, and I don't see it as a huge, immediate problem. These folks are already making way more than people of similar levels of skill in other parts of the country -- in fact, they are double the median income in the US. There are plenty of other essential services, like garbage people, chefs, janitors, cabbies, etc. that get paid les…

> unskilled, replaceable labor

Go get a job as a BART driver. Report back how unskilled and replaceable they are. And report your salary. It'll be lower than you're expecting. All the numbers you're being fed (including the ones on the linked page) are misleading unless you actually consider them from the perspective of a BART employee progressing through his career from the beginning.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#34

Post by joe_the_user »

cjensen wrote: post #15

This is a good lesson for those of us making programs who "need" to charge a certain price in order to make a living. There is something in the human psyche that really wants to make a connection between the price of an item and the living conditions of the seller or the buyer. The lesson is this: the Law of Supply and Demand is not interested in your rationalizations or ad-hoc reasoning about "fair" pricing. In this…

In the real world, actually, this piece of union propaganda does have an effect on the union-management struggle, so actually the world is interested in questions about cost of living. Whether that decides anything is, of course, yet to be determined.

Now in general, people sell stuff to make money and so there may be a demand for a product below what I sell it for but if the costs of producing it, including some skilled labor, are such that no one can make much money selling the good cheaper, well then the "supply" part of "supply and demand" certainly cares about costs of living too. Sure, some electronic products can have their production automated and be made by anyone in the world and thus their supply can feel infinite. But other things involve multiple monopolistic positions. BART has a natural monopoly on medium-rail in the Bay, the union is aiming to preserve a monopoly on supplying labor to BART. In the real world, there no more reason that the union's monopoly should be broken any more than there's a reason to create companies competing someone competing with BART for riders. There are no lessons here, just who wins.

"All's fair in love and war"

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#35

Post by stevewilber »

nknighthb wrote: post #18
stevewilber wrote: post #6

Bart workers pay $92/mo for health insurance. [1] This post is comparing the income for one Bart employee to the expenses for a family of four. I'm not sure why child care is included if only one adult is working. Subtracting those out, I get $54,912. This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-...

> This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?

Bart serves most of the Bay Area, not just the City. As far as I'm concerned, a frugal life in the burbs is a good life. Most of the developers I know live that way.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#37

Post by 3825 »

enjalot wrote: post #30
cjensen wrote: post #15

This is a good lesson for those of us making programs who "need" to charge a certain price in order to make a living. There is something in the human psyche that really wants to make a connection between the price of an item and the living conditions of the seller or the buyer. The lesson is this: the Law of Supply and Demand is not interested in your rationalizations or ad-hoc reasoning about "fair" pricing. In this…

Here's an interesting essay that expands on this exact point: https://medium.com/armchair-economics/ec6139b54795 it's written by a collaborator of this project and a transportation PhD student at Cal.

If we could lose jobs and still run BART safely and efficiently, I am all for fewer jobs (or even no jobs) at BART.

> Suppose there were some technology that rendered BART’s whole workforce unnecessary. Robots maybe. Or some super-efficient private contractor. The public would face a choice: we could lay off all the workers and use the savings to send trains more places, more frequently, and at a higher level of comfort and safety. Or we could carry on.

Sorry but BART does not exist to provide jobs. BART exists to run a public transit. If we don't need those people working in BART, I am sure their hard work will be useful somewhere else.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#38

Post by FrankenPC »

This is a red herring argument. The REAL issue to anyone in the Bay Area who commutes is the extraordinary price of BART tickets. Right now, assuming I DON'T pay the monthly parking permit cost and just wing it (which is getting increasingly difficult...) I pay ~$10 a day for BART. Or about 200$ a month. If you hunt around, you can get monthly parking permits in SF for LESS than that. Yes, gas costs money. But then again, not having to be stuck in "the can" with a bunch of sick people during the winter months is worth the price of gas. BART is pricing themselves out of the commute game. So, my question is: what would it take to lower BART costs WHILE still paying people a decent wage? If it's not possible, then maybe BART just isn't feasible long term.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#39

Post by jamesaguilar »

nknighthb wrote: post #33
jamesaguilar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, unskilled, replaceable labor doesn't get paid much. That is how it always has been, and I don't see it as a huge, immediate problem. These folks are already making way more than people of similar levels of skill in other parts of the country -- in fact, they are double the median income in the US. There are plenty of other essential services, like garbage people, chefs, janitors, cabbies, etc. that get paid les…

> unskilled, replaceable labor Go get a job as a BART driver. Report back how unskilled and replaceable they are. And report your salary. It'll be lower than you're expecting. All the numbers you're being fed (including the ones on the linked page) are misleading unless you actually consider them from the perspective of a BART employee progressing through his career from the beginning.

I am not going to do what you suggested. If you want to explain why you think Bart driving is skilled, hard to replace labor, that would be productive, but telling me to change my career is not an argument.

It is not exactly a revelation that people just starting out in a career get paid less than experienced folks, especially in labor markets controlled by unions.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#40

Post by nknighthb »

stevewilber wrote: post #35
nknighthb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?

Bart serves most of the Bay Area, not just the City. As far as I'm concerned, a frugal life in the burbs is a good life. Most of the developers I know live that way.

Most of the developers you know never eat out, have poor housing, no smartphones or other luxury gadgets, old, cheap cars, a spouse, two kids, and reveal their budget to you?

You have no idea what "frugal" means.

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