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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

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gnicholas·

> Jacobson’s $70,000 salary was six times his police officer’s pay

How is this possible?

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The 80's. Minimum wage was around $2.65 or $5512/yr. He was making roughly twice minimum wage at the time.

Even then, in 1988, that $70,000 salary was pretty good. That's the equivalent of $149,000 today. (Or $52,000 in 1981 when he was a cop).

Perhaps the police pay is just the base, not including overtime or hazard pay that make up much of an officer’s total compensation.

Not to mention official and unofficial benefits; health care and a police pension obviously, but also running drugs on the side, free prostitutes, bribes, immunity from other police, and near absolute power over other individuals in the regular course of your job.

Not all of these still exist today, but many do.

Ha ha, I made $4/hr as a teenager in 1988. Then was given a big raise to $4.25, only because of a minimum wage hike.

Government employees had sweet benefits and awful pay in the 80s. Inflation really killed them in the 70s and early 80s.

As the benefits got more expensive, salaries came up.

I think you've got it backwards. Pay was good and benefits were shit. Increasing benefits and stagnant wages plagues public employees these days. Take the Houston Fire Department for example.

Inflation. The same way I can remember paying $0.79 for gas in the late 1990s.

Also, police officers are not paid well.

> $0.79 for gas in the late 1990s

Inflation only tells some of the story -- oil is marginally controlled by a cartel, OPEC. I seem to recall OPEC following a cheap oil strategy to drive smaller producers to close their wells.

Inflation.

Monthly salary?

That would mean a cop in 1980 is making $140,000 a year.

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