Meanwhile, teachers struggle to get supplies for their classes and kids' music and art programs are cut.
Teachers are another similar category.
California Highway Patrol salaries
151–160 of 182 posts
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, though not sure about California, in my home state pretty much all state troopers are ex-military anyway so it doesn't matter.
Why would it not matter? I don't understand why troopers being ex-military has any relevance to the issue.
If the already went through military bootcamp, CHP bootcamp would be a breeze.
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#153I see an exciting future in journalism that consists of building tools to help users navigate and manipulate data.
Is this already a YC startup? I think that better data visualization tools would help reduce the hold journalists have on peoples' perceptions of the world. Journalists would interpret data more and tell people what to think less. http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html
How is interpreting data for people different from telling them what to think?
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> police have to deal with a wider range of psychological issues Not nearly as much as those serving in the military whose salary is vastly less (closer to the population median income).
True, but is that a problem with police salaries, or with military ones? I have a number of acquaintances in the military, many of whom have served multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a taxpayer and (putative) beneficiary of their service, I'm personally embarrassed by how little they get paid.
They get the population median income. Without having to have acquired any skills before joining, all training and living costs are paid for after enlistement. Base pay is still far higher than minimum wage work. I'd say the problem in this specific context is undeniably CHP salaries being artificially super inflated above the national median income in a market inefficient manner that does not reflect supply of people capable of performing the work.
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#155The jobs should be auctioned. A job is posted, the top 20 candidates are identified, and each submits a bid for how much to do the job and the lowest bid is accepted.
This is the way many other jobs are assigned such as construction contractors or engineering consultants. CA taxpayers could save a bundle with this approach.
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#156The jobs should be auctioned. A job is posted, the top 20 candidates are identified, and each submits a bid for how much to do the job and the lowest bid is accepted. This is the way many other jobs are assigned such as construction contractors or engineering consultants. CA taxpayers could save a bundle with this approach.
The top 20 candidates somehow always end up being the relatives of the people running the auction. The low bidder wins, but every time someone is arrested for a crime not on the list in the contract (which is 90% of them), the state is charged an "change order" fee.
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pay is not determined by the difficulty or unpleasantness of the job, or at least, not directly. It is determined by the balance of supply and demand. How many people are ready and willing to be police officers at some level of pay, and how many police officers are needed? Policing isn't trivial, but you know what? Neither are most other jobs. There are many, many people with the capability of being police officers;…
I don't think this pay is rooted in the laws of economics. The number of people applying for police officer jobs is huge - but that doesn't mean the pay gets lowered for anyone. The contracts are negotiated by the veterans in the force, and the people with criminal justice degrees waiting in the wings who would gladly take less money are not stake holders in contract negotiations.
Absolutely, that's my point. Just because they are valuable doesn't mean they should actually get paid according to their "value".
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#158It is difficult to resist the conclusion that unions exercise total capture of the Californian budgetmaking process. (100% payraises in the face of the financial collapse? For line officers? In only two years? After they're the best paid in the nation? Before you consider the pensions?!)
These guys are getting a lot of overtime in their last year so they can jack up their pensions. Some fools in Sacramento agreed to just consider the LAST year of work when calculating their pensions. Obviously, Californians are being taken for a ride. By the union, by whoever is approving the overtime (probably another union member), by the legislative majority and whichever governor signed this very bad deal for tax…
Ireland also has a 'pension is based on last year's salary' for many public sector workers.
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pay is not determined by the difficulty or unpleasantness of the job, or at least, not directly. It is determined by the balance of supply and demand. How many people are ready and willing to be police officers at some level of pay, and how many police officers are needed? Policing isn't trivial, but you know what? Neither are most other jobs. There are many, many people with the capability of being police officers;…
Pay is not determined by the difficulty or unpleasantness of the job, or at least, not directly. It is determined by the balance of supply and demand. That's true, but the market is ridiculously deformed on both sides of that equation. On the supply side, there are many who would like to be cops but the requirements bar them entry (most often for legitimate reasons, but I suspect not always). On the demand side, Amer…
I think you misunderstood when I said you can't be paid more than you are worth; I don't mean that you can't overpay someone, ever, I'm saying that nobody, government or otherwise, can persistently over the long haul pay its employees more than they are worth. I'd say any definition of "value" or "worth" that does permit that is so broken as to be useless. It's simply impossible; a system simply can not have more value flowing out of it than the sum total of the value it generates, the value it takes in, and the value it has on hand, and imbalances in income vs. outflow tend to be able to rapidly deplete the stored value.
That the market is "ridiculously deformed" here is sort of my point, along with the fact that such deformations can not be sustained.
Re: California Highway Patrol salaries
#160I see an exciting future in journalism that consists of building tools to help users navigate and manipulate data.
Google Spreadsheet?