from LRC Blog, This is pretty wild. I don't know if it's a strong arm tactic to muscle the unions into line or what, but 77 firefighters making upwards of $150k a year, is insane. What is the starting wage in that department?
Pay and Pension for government workers is a growing problem, a lot of that was covered by increase tax revenue due to increasing home values. That avenue for revenue is gone and the cracks are showing.
Fire fighters are total rip offs. A 19 year old fire fighter who just starts with no education and no experience makes about $60,000 /year in Canada. In comparison a university graduate will make about $30-$35 to start with. The funny thing is that even when there is a fire alarm, they come and sit down outside and wait to make sure that there is no fire before going in.
disclaimer: I don't know more details about the wage scales of firefighters in Canada. However I know enough abuot similar low-skilled jobs. Firefighters and other jobs may earn more then university graduates when they start. However the increase is very little in most cases.. 10 years later the firefighter may earn $65000 and by the end of his career when he's 65 he's maybe up to 75000 or 80000. Being a firefighter is also the same job he'll do for the rest of his life, he takes risks, may get killed, needs to be physically in good shape (even when he's 60 years old), .. Someone with a university graduate may start very low, but if he's good enough, changes jobs, .. he should be able to increase his wage a lot, after 10 years he maybe reached $80000, and by the end of his career he maybe became a ceo and makes millions..
for a person with an engineering degree or accounting degree takes many years to reach the starting salary of a firefighter or police officer. They also have a very generous salary increase and retirement plan which pays them their full salary at retirement at about age 55. Not bad for spending your time in gym, eating with your friends at fire station and in summer sitting outside whistling at the girls. The whole government pay system is disgrace which over pays on almost everything.
Sooner or later, the people were going to run into trouble when their (civil) servants made more money than they do. Living off the housing boom was terrible short, short term planning. But then that is what government specializes in. Short term planning and results, usually with long term costs and consequences. That is because they get their revenue by decree, and can deficit spend by fiat. You and I have to work, and actually produce something as far as goods and services, or take on investment risk to get money to spend. Money to us has real value. It's scarce. But the government doesn't have a scarcity problem, because the money is collected before it produces something, and it's collected by decree. Or, they just borrow more using their ability to tax in the future as the collateral. WE (people, humans) really need to get a hold of this. The West, in particular is slipping back into a sort of economic feudalism.
I guesss Clinton and Obama do not need to fight so hard to be the President, this looks a better position.
Time to think outside the box, ready? How much would it cost the college graduate to GO to college? Well are we talking undergrad or full graduate? We'll just say undergrad and the avg. is about $80,000 to achieve that. So for those 4 years while the scholar is learning and the other guy is fighting fires (or drinking beer), the scholar has made a loss of $80,000 and the fire fighter, a gain of $260,000. Now, let's do the math: 10 years later: (if scholar avg.'s $50,000 within first ten years and FF still $65,000) College Kid: 50k x 10 - 80k = $420,000 Firefighter: 65k x 10 + 260k = $910,000 Ok, one step further kids. Let's take it the whole way to retirement and account for averages again. We'll say they work till 67. So.. 35 years later: (scholar avg. $90,000, did some job jumping. FF's avg is $73,000) College Kid: 90k x 35 + 420k = $3,570,000. Firefighter: 73k x 35 + 910k = $3,465,000. Difference of $105,000. And when you account for tax brackets, which I'm unfamiliar with, the margin may be even lower! That's a 3% advantage the College kid has. So much for those 4 years of school and any skilled labor you were working at. Looking at those 2 numbers and the tiny margin between, which path would you take? What are the incentives to do anymore than a government job? Edit: The number 65k for the firefighter was based on a post on Canadian wage. Could have been 150k. But you get my theory.
Over several decades a small but not insignificant number of municipalities have gone bankrupt ranging from very large cities to smaller communities. Balancing urban govt costs with revenues is nto easy, its subject to politics, and more recently the pension issue is raising its very ugly head. The unfunded pension issue, in particular may be a very negative financial situation for both municipalities and states alike. Regardless, jobs such as police and firemen are vital and important, and whether someone has a problem with these guys "sitting on their asses" over many hours.....people turn extremely grateful when the police or firemen save lives and property. This is not to support endless salary increases and/or endless pensions which severely crimp the resources of local govts. I spoke with a friend recently who is a noted world expert on some aspect of urban transportation systems such as buses and subways. He was disecting the issues at a symposium whereby the head of an American major transit system was complaining about costs and wanting more income. The expert noted that salaries at this large transit system, matched or were higher than average salaries in the region and were higher than transit salaries in other urban areas. meanwhile the riders of this transit system was primarily servicing a public with lower than average salaries for the region. The govt workers were getting paid more than the people whose taxes were paying the transit workers salaries that supported them. Most urban areas rely on some form of mass transit throughout the world. Most big cities that have these systems find that the transit systems are always underwritten through tax subsidies. I'm not sure of any such transit systems in the world that make money on an operating basis...and none certainly make money on an investment and operating basis. In any case, I'm just suggesting that the whole thing is tricky and complex...and its tough to balance between providing adequate emergency services such as firemen and police and paying them. On the other hand....as cities such as Vallejo City currently may file for bankruptcy....the cities fromt he past couple of decades that filed for bankruptcy have come out of it and are on a healthier financial footing. Its not impossible to balance these costs...its just tricky, hard and takes work
Actually, you can't balance costs when you get into the political game of procuring services without raising taxes to pay for them. The problem with government generally is that the less competent they are, the more funding they get. A crime problem is not addressed by loosening laws, but by hiring more cops to enforce them. Why do we find that governments are constantly making things illegal? Constantly creating legislation to regulate, tax and discriminate? It's a method of growth. The Hegelian dialectic, Problem => Reaction => Solution leads to, Problem with the Solution => Reaction => Solution and so on and so forth. Recently, some cities have taken to removing their camera ticketing systems, because the cameras encouraged better and more legal driving habits, which made the cameras too expensive to operate as revenue from fines fell. It seems the cameras were "too efficient" at stopping crime. Honestly, i can't make this stuff up. The state will actually encourage crime when revenue falls from good behavior. Just to validate it's power and existence. Property taxes on their face are silly anyway. You buy a property, pay for it, then the city tells you how you can use it, and taxes you for owning it. If you don't pay your taxes, the government can take your property away. After you have full paid for it. So if you can have it confiscated unless you pay a tithe, and you can't use it at your own discretion, do you ever really own it? And if not, why? The entire system is counter-intuitive. State apologists will make every excuse and ramble endlessly about efficiencies, challenges, public/common goods, etc. But when looked at rationally, the system is quite plainly, ridiculous.
Nobody said these jobs are not important but when a 19 years old cop makes more than a doctor then something is wrong since it only takes 6 months to become a copy versus 7-9 years for becoming a doctor. They can cut the fireman and police salary by half and it will be no drop in recruitment since they are still getting at least 50% more than other unqualified workers in their situation. The transit and bus drivers are another good example as you mentioned. The bus drivers are getting over $30/hour while showing up drunk or high to work but an account with university education gets about $15-$18/hour. Where is the logic in that?
For starters, I hope to never ride a bus in your city if bus drivers are 'showing up drunk or high to work'! Firefighting is very skilled job these days, their remit of the areas that they cover has grown massively, as well as the skills needed to work the high tech machinery in the 21st century. Firefighters are not unqualified. They are required to undergo continuous training from their very first day and right throughout their careers. And in what country do 19 year old cops make more than a doctor? Certainly not in the UK as the average wage for a doctor here is over $200,000.
It certainly takes a lot of training to ride a Choo choo truck, unfold a hose and open the water. How can they learn so much in just couple of months to become a fire fighter?
Do you have a source for this? (since you didn't make it up) I know many cities in California have stopped using the cameras but not for the reason you suggest. I would be curious to learn more about the cities you speak about.
I didn't bookmark it, but I would be happy to dig up the source. That's assuming you will compensate my time spent searching with some green rep?
Guerilla: Get rid of the cops and the firemen in major cities...and the explosion of lawlessness would be unbelievable. Remember these are cities where you already support the right of anyone to have a gun at any time. Unfortunately there is a sick underbelly of criminal behavior...for any number of thousands of reasons. At least that is true in America it appears to be growing in truth for wealthier European nations that are both relatively wealthy and similarly have large urban populations that have dramtically relatively poor populations such as France. In fact Mexico with dramatic differences in rich and poor is suffering from tremendous violence, as are so many nations that are less affluent on the overall scale, but have enormous impoverished populations. In any society without a police entity and disparities in income one will see this occur. that is a certainty of society over thousands of years.
I support the right for everyone to have a gun, because it's been proven in studies that gun ownership by law abiding citizens reduces the amount of premeditated crime. It's a left-liberal fallacy that disarming law abiding citizens will make us safer. Not to mention, that an armed soiety is a free society. The Founders expected us to use our weapons to keep the government in check, not for duck hunting. But no one is talking about getting rid of cops. What they should be looking at, is crimes that are victimless, but consume police resources. It's senseless to keep adding laws, and adding cops endlessly, and think you will ever get a handle on crime. Do you know how many states sodomy is still illegal in? I mean, why even have a law like that on the books any longer? It's similar IMO to the IRS tactic of having so many conflicting rules and codes, that it is impossible not to be guilty of some infraction. Again, this is the tightening of tyrannical power. America has 25% of the world's prison population, and only 5% of the world's population. Do you have any idea how many people are in jail for victimless crimes? Try over 1 million Americans. What are the costs of keeping them incarcerated, investigating, prosecuting etc? What a waste. It's $25k a year to put a dope smoker behind bars. That's $25 billion per year just to incarcerate them. 1/360th of the debt.
I have great respect for the principals and actions of local govts. In the states, by law, many of them are forced to balance budgets. That is a remarkable self correcting mechanism within govt. that can often elimate elements of waste or overexpenditure. It tends to create the very limits on endless govt growth that someone like guerilla claims is of the very nature of all governments. That above referenced process isn't perfect, but it refreshingly sees various types of local governments grow then shrink; add services and then pull back on services due to budget constraints, while still trying to meet demands of citizens. Its happening right now across America as a slowing economy is dramatically cutting into local government revenue streams. Frankly, it will be interesting to see how citizens of places like Las Vegas and various communities in California and Florida cope with the impact of drastically lower property tax incomes. Its a refreshing but difficult process that copes with reality. On the other hand the fantasy of no government or such limited services is very unreal within the real world. But if one wants to see the impact of no government one only needs look at Lebanon, which is again in the news and again drawing commentary at this forum. Whether taxing folks or not, effectively the nation of Lebanon has virtually no government and has not had one for years. Currently it is a warring fiefdom. It lived through a 15 year civil war. It was effectively taken over by Syria for a long period of time. The diaspora of native Lebanese is huge. Because the nation has been so tumultuous for so many decades it has no reliable census and no reliable count on its current population. But best guesses are that there are currently somewhere in a range of 3-6 million living in Lebanon now. The diaspora of former Lebanese living elsewhere in the world might be in the 10 million population range. That is a function of anarchy and chaos. Similarly it is a function of a population without any effective civilizing controls in the midst of uncontrolled warfare over decades. What a pity. On a natural basis it is the prettyiest and most compelling geography of the middle east. Unfortunately for most of the last 3 decades or longer it has been a central point for localized warfare amongst local groups/tribes/etc and there has not been a centural govt or entity that can restore peace. How sad.
Right, because history is replete with examples of how our governments have shrunk since 1776. We definitely have less government today than in 1800. Or 1900. Or 2000. We definitely pay less taxes as a % of income than in 1800, 1900 or 2000. I have a serious question Earl. Are you for real?