Forget this discussion about Fed vrs Private sector pays. The bottomline is governments tend to overspend and need to curtail that in order to bring financial books into black numbers. ps: don't know about pay, but pensions in government sector are much better.
Those are excellent points. I don't think there is enough information about his new job benefits to know if he really took a de facto cut, but it is very likely his new job is less secure, and how do you evaluate the value of job security? (I'm sure some academic economist would be happy to tell us how.)
"academic economist" particularly a tenured one or on second thought maybe an adjunct one who could be fired tomorrow.
Exactly. It's extremely hard to fire a Federal worker. Unless you do something blatantly illegal or very un-PC (e.g., white male accused of 'wacism or sexual harrassment), you have near bulletproof job security. Also, no one can force you to work more than 40+ hours/week without paying O/T. How many salaried employees in Corporateville can say this?
Instead of Americans whining about not making enough, perhaps they might want to find ways to be more productive in order to be able to demand more pay. If there is no demand, then find a different niche. It's outrageous to think deserving of more income just for showing up to work.
This is nitpicking, for which I apologize, but I wouldn't think it outrageous at all for someone making only $7.25/hour to demand more pay for showing up if they did anything more at all. That should be the pay for just showing up, i.e., $7.25, any productivity on top of showing up should be worth something in addition to $7.25. You can't expect the average joe to work hard if there is no incentive to do so. Yes, some are ingrained with a work ethic, but many are not, or their indifference to work is a learned response to abuse. $7.25/hour in 2014 is abusive! (The minimum wage in the mid 1960s was $10.50/hr -- constant dollars. Look no further than that if you would try to understand malaise among minimum wage workers today, and our growing wealth disparity.)
OK, I'm sending 20 high schoolers to your double-wide. I trust you can do the 40 * $7.25 * 20 math to see what you need to shell out each week. They may actually clean the place a little for $12/hr. Sheesh, with this mindset it's not hard to see why we're in a mess.
I agree with some of what you are saying. I'm all for helping the poor, etc. As you are probably aware, my concern comes from the picture of an economy that has overspent without significant production. That was all. On your topic there, what is your take on the recent CBO release? http://www.cbo.gov/publication/4499...dBlitzEmail&utm_content=812526&utm_campaign=0
". I'm all for helping the poor, etc. " you sound like a product of a wish washy education. you are All for helping the poor. what exactly does that mean to you?