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Are Wisconsin public employees overcompensated?

Are Wisconsin public employees overcompensated?


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Slartibartfast

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Are Wisconsin Public Employees Over-compensated?

However, the data indicates that state and local government employees in Wisconsin are not overpaid. Comparisons controlling for education, experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability reveal that employees of both state and local governments in Wisconsin earn less than comparable private sector employees. On an annual basis, full-time state and local government employees in Wisconsin are undercompensated by 8.2% compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. This compensation disadvantage is smaller but still significant when hours worked are factored in. Full-time public employees work fewer annual hours, particularly employees with bachelor’s, master’s, and professional degrees (because many are teachers or university professors).
When comparisons are made controlling for the difference in annual hours worked, full-time state and local government employees are undercompensated by 4.8%, compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. To summarize, our study shows that Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation per hour than comparable full-time employees in Wisconsin’s private sector.

http://epi.3cdn.net/9e237c56096a8e4904_rkm6b9hn1.pdf

Page 5 of the study shows total compensation and defines it as pay as well as benefits and it still shows public employees coming up with less.

However, comparisons of public vs private compensation does not address the philosophical feelings of people and how they feel that public employees should be compensated. What is your view?
 
Are Wisconsin Public Employees Over-compensated?

http://epi.3cdn.net/9e237c56096a8e4904_rkm6b9hn1.pdf

Page 5 of the study shows total compensation and defines it as pay as well as benefits and it still shows public employees coming up with less.

However, comparisons of public vs private compensation does not address the philosophical feelings of people and how they feel that public employees should be compensated. What is your view?

I don't believe the source. The author is a professor active in public sector labor relations. His research is hardly unbiased. Paraphrasing him, he says there's just no way to find a comparable private sector job to compare. Yeah, well, I pretty much agree unless one looks to Catholic schools and other private schools. He says, nah, that won't work.

How 'bout we let the market speak? It works for everything else. People are standing in line to be teachers. They have always been standing in line to be teachers. Anyone wonder why that is?
 
I don't believe the source. The author is a professor active in public sector labor relations. His research is hardly unbiased. Paraphrasing him, he says there's just no way to find a comparable private sector job to compare. Yeah, well, I pretty much agree unless one looks to Catholic schools and other private schools. He says, nah, that won't work.

How 'bout we let the market speak? It works for everything else. People are standing in line to be teachers. They have always been standing in line to be teachers. Anyone wonder why that is?

The reason it couldn't directly be comparable was because of hours worked, which is valid and so is the normalization against that.
 
The reason it couldn't directly be comparable was because of hours worked, which is valid and so is the normalization against that.

Very easy to adjust for hours worked.

What does, "And so is the normalization against that" mean?
 
Very easy to adjust for hours worked.

What does, "And so is the normalization against that" mean?

basically what you said, adjustments to look at compensation per hour vs annual compensation.
 
From MaggieD in rejecting facts which prove her wrong

I don't believe the source.

Like Paul Simon wrote in The Boxer..." a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest".

It looks like that applies to a woman also.

Interesting that you use the word BELIEVE. It has become painfully obvious that almost all of the anti-union rhetoric and anti-teacher vitriol being posted around here the last few days is not founded on objective facts or information but is simply a willfully adopted BELIEF that is accepted as one accepts religion.
 
I don't believe the source. The author is a professor active in public sector labor relations. His research is hardly unbiased. Paraphrasing him, he says there's just no way to find a comparable private sector job to compare. Yeah, well, I pretty much agree unless one looks to Catholic schools and other private schools. He says, nah, that won't work.

How 'bout we let the market speak? It works for everything else. People are standing in line to be teachers. They have always been standing in line to be teachers. Anyone wonder why that is?

Huh? All I ever come across are claims that there are teacher shortages, never a teacher surplus.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/education/07teacher.html

Report Envisions Shortage of Teachers as Retirements Escalate


The problem is aggravated by high attrition among rookie teachers, with one of every three new teachers leaving the profession within five years, a loss of talent that costs school districts millions in recruiting and training expenses, says the report, by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit research advocacy group.

“The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends,” the report says. “Beginners are being driven away” by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and “accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems” that encourage teachers to move from paycheck to pension when they are still in their mid-50s, the report says.

To ease the exodus, the report says, policy makers should restructure schools and modify state retirement policies so that thousands of the best veteran teachers can stay on in the classroom to mentor inexperienced teachers. Reorganizing schools around what the report calls learning teams, a model already in place in some schools in Boston, could ease the strain on pension systems, raise student achievement and help young teachers survive their first, often traumatic years in the classroom, it says.
 
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In a sense Maggie is right about the people standing in line for jobs.

The jobs market is being manipulated to place society where some elites want it.
Products are always in demand, there is no problem with the demand side of supply and demand.

However in order to suppress the wage side of the story you must create a job shortage crisis.
Also to suppress the wage side you must suppress the education side of the story.
Less educated = less pay. More desperation to have a job = less demand for better wages. Just let me eat and sleep under some kind of roof and I'll do anything you want.
 
Mega -- you just posted this poll and there are 51 yes votes. I've voted, so I can't see who's voted yes; but this just HAS to be wrong. How do you think this happens?

Maybe a moderator could explain?
 
Mega -- you just posted this poll and there are 51 yes votes. I've voted, so I can't see who's voted yes; but this just HAS to be wrong. How do you think this happens?

Maybe a moderator could explain?

Someone is jury rigging the poll :(

You can look at "who voted" to get a more accurate picture.
 
In a sense Maggie is right about the people standing in line for jobs.

The jobs market is being manipulated to place society where some elites want it.
Products are always in demand, there is no problem with the demand side of supply and demand.

However in order to suppress the wage side of the story you must create a job shortage crisis.
Also to suppress the wage side you must suppress the education side of the story.
Less educated = less pay. More desperation to have a job = less demand for better wages. Just let me eat and sleep under some kind of roof and I'll do anything you want.


Sorry, that make no sense whatsoever.
 
An opinion poll does NOT tell you if an employee is overcompensated.

It might reveal that far too many people have swallowed the MacIlister lies and do not research the source or bother to verify the so called claims made by it.
 
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An opinion poll does NOT tell you if an employee is overcompensated.

Such a thing is a matter of opinion and a poll is useful for finding out the opinions of the regular posters here.
 
Every Public Sector Union slob in this country is over-compensated........

.....sure its hard to avoid when you vote yourself a payraise and more benefits every two years..........

There is no greed like Union greed........
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Are Wisconsin Public Employees Over-compensated?



http://epi.3cdn.net/9e237c56096a8e4904_rkm6b9hn1.pdf

Page 5 of the study shows total compensation and defines it as pay as well as benefits and it still shows public employees coming up with less.

However, comparisons of public vs private compensation does not address the philosophical feelings of people and how they feel that public employees should be compensated. What is your view?

I don't know.So I picked other.
 
Every Public Sector Union slob in this country is over-compensated........

.....sure its hard to avoid when you vote yourself a payraise and more benefits every two years..........

There is no greed like Union greed........
.
.
.
.

there is no over the top hyperbole like right wing over the top hyperbole.
 
How many people in the private sector lost their jobs? Public sector? Yeah, this is a no-brainer.
 
How many people in the private sector lost their jobs? Public sector? Yeah, this is a no-brainer.

This has nothing to do with how much a person gets paid per year. At least, I am not following your logic at this point.
 
This has nothing to do with how much a person gets paid per year. At least, I am not following your logic at this point.

I mean that comparatively, public employees have had it pretty good. That they still have their jobs is a wonderful thing compared to the high unemployment rate for everyone else.

And I don't know if this applies for Wisconsin, but teachers are generally paid much, much more than private school counterparts (at least per pupil spending, which I assume would be kind of proportional to teacher pay).
They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools | Adam B. Schaeffer | Cato Institute: Policy Analysis
 
I mean that comparatively, public employees have had it pretty good. That they still have their jobs is a wonderful thing compared to the high unemployment rate for everyone else.

And I don't know if this applies for Wisconsin, but teachers are generally paid much, much more than private school counterparts (at least per pupil spending, which I assume would be kind of proportional to teacher pay).
They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools | Adam B. Schaeffer | Cato Institute: Policy Analysis

Yes, I agree that public school teachers are paid more than private school counterparts. At least this is true in my state. However, there is also a large difference in necessary qualifications which accounts for much of it. Private schools generally accept less qualified teachers. Again, I am using my state as an example. Given that they are not directly comparable, I can't really say that they are overpaid because of that.
 
Yes, I agree that public school teachers are paid more than private school counterparts. At least this is true in my state. However, there is also a large difference in necessary qualifications which accounts for much of it. Private schools generally accept less qualified teachers. Again, I am using my state as an example. Given that they are not directly comparable, I can't really say that they are overpaid because of that.

What is directly comparable is results, and private schools get better results. So explain that discrepancy. The schools that do better pay their teachers less because the worse schools are subsidized.
 
What is directly comparable is results, and private schools get better results. So explain that discrepancy. The schools that do better pay their teachers less because the worse schools are subsidized.

From the studies I have seen, private schools tend to get equal or worse results to public schools and a good bit of the higher results are due to parental involvement (given that parents who are interested in their kid's education are the most likely to be actively involved with it). There is some hype about charter schools and what not, but it is only hype.
 
In all tests private schools perform better. When a cohort study is done the difference isn't as great, but still private schools perform better (but who knows the quality of those cohort studies) at least in the higher grades.
 
In all tests private schools perform better. When a cohort study is done the difference isn't as great, but still private schools perform better (but who knows the quality of those cohort studies) at least in the higher grades.
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf

The group portrait shows wide variation in performance. The study reveals that a decent fraction
of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students.
Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local
public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly
worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.
These findings underlie the parallel findings of significant state‐by‐state differences in charter
school performance and in the national aggregate performance of charter schools. The policy
challenge is how to deal constructively with varying levels of performance today and into the
future.

According to this study, on average they are worse.

However, I agree that the more expensive private schools yield better results, but that won't have much of an affect on the general population. Teachers in the more expensive schools are usually paid better too.
 
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