A friend showed the article about CA State employees to a friend of his who is quite connected to these issues for Marin County and thus us his response: "yeah, I know it's pretty shocking, especially since Marin's government employees get automatic raises, have a better pension plan than Social Security, and can retire at 55 after 10 years of employment and get 90% of their salary and benefits (including dental and eye) for life. But this guy isn't even making as much as Mill Valley's City Manger. And did you know the average Marin Fire Chief retires at 55 and makes a retirement and benefits package of about $500,000 for life. That's equivalent of being given $11 million in cash that you put in 4.5%, 30-year U.S. Treasuries. But no one seems to care about this in Marin or any California cities. If you write about it, they say you're petty and compare themselves to tech CEOs and then claim they're underpaid."
Not to justify it but the Prime Minister of your adopted country, Mr Lee, said when asked why civil servants were paid so well: 1. You want to attract the best and brightest to serve the people, not the dumb and rejects. 2. We carry a big stick against corruptions. You want to pay them well so you minimize corruptions, there is no need to accept bribes to make a decent living.
%% Good . Even better, some of that made so much money in private sector ; took a pay cut just because they were + are good @ governing. They put it their fortune in a blind trust. Or course /I would not blame a MCD manager or owner if they wanted to stay in private sector; USa is still a free country.
To me it speaks of the implosion of the empire. Everyone is scamming the system every which way possible and getting away with it. There's no shame, no grotesque sense of entitlement, no abuse. Mid level civil servants on half a mill a year for life? Of course they deserve it! They'll argue about the outrageous corporate C level pay packages or the shamefully low teachers pay all unions must bond together to fight for raises (as long as my pay increases at the same rate too, right? wink, wink).. So who says it's not possible that CA median individual income be $124k a year??
This is the reason given to explain why government ministers are the highest paid in the world, in excess of $1M a year. The amount is based on the average of the 100 highest paid CEOs in Singapore. What they, and anyone who believes 1/4 to 1/2 million dollars for life to union administrators in CA is justified, C level corporate titans are paid a chunk of company profits, while public employees are paid from tax money. When I grew up, the understanding was that government paid employees got less than private sector but had job security and a good pension plan. Today, they get this and that.
%% AK has such a low population/oil funds from fund. Loving county TX has among the highest $ , wikipedia notes+ smallest population of USa. In 1970 they had no people on welfare.