To return to a previous topic, here's another argument, this one from Ezra Klein, that (a) public employees don't make more than private employees, but (b) we all have a stake in public employees being better paid.
----------------
Public employees don't make more than private employees
There seems to be a lot of jealousy toward public employees out there, most of it powered by an impression that public employees get more money for less work. But via Kevin Drum comes this table from the Economic Policy Institute, which suggests that this just isn't true:
The data (pdf) come from Rutgers's Jeffrey Keefe, and he also ran "a separate calculation that controls for full-time status, education level, years of experience, age, gender, race, employer organizational size, industry, and hours worked," which found that "public employees are compensated 2-7% less than equivalent private sector employees."
Which makes sense: You never hear public employees say that they went into government for the money. But to make the more counterintuitive point, this is a fairly counterproductive conversation. We want really good regulators watching Wall Street. We want talented people teaching our children. We want our trash picked up by workers who want to keep their job and we want the DMV staffed by individuals who aren't incompetent. That isn't to say we should pay every public worker millions and millions of dollars, but very few go into government work because they're of a charitable bent. It's a job, like any other, and it attracts talent only by paying it well.
By Ezra Klein | September 16, 2010; 11:04 AM ET
voices.washingtonpost.com |
