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Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

sxywu.github.io

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Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#51

Post by fishtoaster »

> This causes a slight discrepancy in the bar graph, as the cost of living figures assume all parents to be working, but the income assumes only one working parent.

That seems like a pretty big discrepancy, and makes the cost-of-living vs pay comparison meaningless. If you assume each parent contributes equally to their cost of living, you would pretty much halve the 'cost-of-living' line on the chart.

Even if the other parent only makes 50% of what the bart employee parent makes, it would pretty easily close the gap between pay and COL for most of these positions.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#52

Post by jamesaguilar »

nknighthb wrote: post #49
jamesaguilar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You implied that they should be paid enough to live in downtown SF, which I think is equivalent to claiming they should be paid more. If not, let's just assume I can come up with some convoluted reason why I'm not talking about their pay either, and we can just stop talking about it. > Pieces of paper from a broken educational system are not determinant of how much someone can or should make. Certainly agree with tha…

What I implied is that arguing they shouldn't is detached elitism. You're free to stop talking about anything you want at any time.

Interesting. Let me get this straight. You claim folks who think bart workers shouldn't get paid more are detached elitists. But, you also aren't actually arguing they should get paid more. That seems like an untenable position to me.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#53

Post by nknighthb »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #52
nknighthb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I implied is that arguing they shouldn't is detached elitism. You're free to stop talking about anything you want at any time.

Interesting. Let me get this straight. You claim folks who think bart workers shouldn't get paid more are detached elitists. But, you also aren't actually arguing they should get paid more. That seems like an untenable position to me.

"Nonsense" is what the capitalists are spewing: "It's a good life" vs perceived market value. Stick to one or the other. Either it's sufficient that the market work it out, or quality of life matters. Argue one or the other, not both.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#54

Post by ultrasaurus »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #16
walshemj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes so what all employees cost about 2.5 3.0 times the headline salary rate. And what a lot of HN news readers probably dont realise (unless your in production engineering) is that for lower level blue collar jobs Bonus and OT are major parts of those workers pay packets.

I understand why maintenance staff might have surprise OT, but isn't a station agent or a conductor the very model of a job with predictable hours? It seems like BART should have no trouble correctly lining up workers and work without needing to resort to overtime. Clarification: I'm surprised that overtime would be a "major" part of the average station agent's salary. Obviously there's going to be some mismatch, but…

I hadn't realized how easy the data was to get[1]. The 300 Station agents make an average of 57.6k/year in salary, 10.5k/year in overtime and 7.4k in bonuses (includes vacation, unused sick days etc).

So for a station agent, they do make very close to 80k, and (assuming that overtime is 2x their normal rate) the 18% on top of their salary means they likely put in ~10% overtime. If my manager underestimated how long a station was open by 4 hours every week, I'd be annoyed, but 10% doesn't seem shocking.

[1] https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-a...

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#55

Post by jamesaguilar »

nknighthb wrote: post #53
jamesaguilar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Let me get this straight. You claim folks who think bart workers shouldn't get paid more are detached elitists. But, you also aren't actually arguing they should get paid more. That seems like an untenable position to me.

"Nonsense" is what the capitalists are spewing: "It's a good life" vs perceived market value. Stick to one or the other. Either it's sufficient that the market work it out, or quality of life matters. Argue one or the other, not both.

Personally, I think that both should be weighed into the decision, but BART workers are way above average in terms of how their QoL is covered, and as a result should not have that optimized further considering their already over-market pay and the considerable cost to the taxpayer.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#56

Post by fishtoaster »

3825 wrote: post #32
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…

A few questions:

- Why is 217 too much, and 150 is better? Presumably some organizations need lots of management, while others need very little- how do you, as an outside observer, come up with a reasonable number? - Where did you get 17%? According to [0], there are 3430 bart employees. 217/3430 = 6.3%.

0: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay%20Ar...

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#57

Post by sxywu »

ceras wrote: post #25
sxywu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the cost of living from Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget Calculator, and their documentation [1] is particularly interesting to sift through. In particular, the child care costs are apparently broken down like this: One parent, one child = cost of 4-year-old care One parent, two children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of one school-age child One parent, three children = cost of 4-year-old care + cos…

For two adults, >0 children, I think childcare should really be excluded from costs. It's not accurate for most any family in that position. Though I understand figuring out the second parent's income is difficult, I think it's more dangerous to entirely exclude it. To me it comes off as misinformation (especially when combined with the childcare costs). You can consider a hideable layer that allows the user to put t…

I love it. I was just wondering how I could possibly include a second income in the graph, and your suggestion is just perfect - thank you!

As for the costs, they're actually customizable - you can choose it from the dropdown. I will also work to make that more explicit.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#58

Post by nknighthb »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #55
nknighthb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nonsense" is what the capitalists are spewing: "It's a good life" vs perceived market value. Stick to one or the other. Either it's sufficient that the market work it out, or quality of life matters. Argue one or the other, not both.

Personally, I think that both should be weighed into the decision, but BART workers are way above average in terms of how their QoL is covered, and as a result should not have that optimized further considering their already over-market pay and the considerable cost to the taxpayer.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-08/news/ct-met-ge...

"Way above average"? "over-market"? Are you adjusting for cost of living in your guess or not?

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#59

Post by jamesaguilar »

nknighthb wrote: post #58
jamesaguilar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think that both should be weighed into the decision, but BART workers are way above average in terms of how their QoL is covered, and as a result should not have that optimized further considering their already over-market pay and the considerable cost to the taxpayer.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-08/news/ct-met-ge... "Way above average"? "over-market"? Are you adjusting for cost of living in your guess or not?

Above a average for workers with similar background and job difficulty. Not transit workers. Yes, I am just guessing.

Re: Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

#60

Post by russell_h »

enjalot wrote: post #29
antr wrote: post #11

Last time I read on HN about the Bay Area developer salary, it seemed to me that consensus was that a $100-120k salary in the Bay Area is considered bang-on middle-income. BART technical jobs are well below that, and one can argue these are low-income. If $100-120k/year salary is middle income what's the exact issue with BART salaries?

Tech is a booming industry, and there aren't enough people with the skills to do the work that needs to be done so high salaries are common. It is unclear what the supply and demand curve is for public transit employees, but it will be skewed by labor contracts. The issue is that a lot of people don't make as much as BART employees (or have nearly as good benefits). If their salaries of BART employees are higher than…

BART "receives 2,500 to 3,000 applicants every time it advertises for new train operators and station agents", and "gets 20,473 job applications annually for an average of 177 job openings".

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-r...

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