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Comment by tooltalk | Hacker News Reader

It's not too surprising for a city where a policeman can make $150k (base and overtime) year just after 8 years in service.

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that's so relative. It is sooooo much more expensive to live up in New York with the cost of living higher than most states and all the taxes you have to pay... Remember that you have fed and state... also if you work in NYC you have to pay a special tax. Top that off if you live in NJ and work in NYC, you're really paying alot in taxes. So your 150K might be down to 80K after all the taxes and commuter fees (like tolls) you have to pay.

Except civic workers should be making middle class wages, especially ones that don't require extensive education. Why should a gilded class of unionized workers get these huge individual wages when the median family income there is still hovering around 55k.

This is a feature, not a bug. Just because wages haven't increased since the 90s and the middle class has collapsed in the US doesn’t mean the hard-won protections of unions should be slashed to match.

Its a fucked up situation. It is not equitable at all. For some reason the ever increasing government functionary class gets more and more of their fellow citizens hard earned wages.

Unions in the private sector provide workers protections from exploitative capitalists who exist for the sake of profit and profit alone. Public agencies exist to better society, if we paid these workers less, than we could hire more, and these sorts of jobs would be available to more people where services could potentially improve.

Why should a gilded class of web developers doing jobs that don't require extensive education get these huge individual wages when the median family income there is still hovering around 55k?

Because there's demand for developers that supply cannot meet, the demand to take on a civic job in NYC is tremendous, yet we constrain supply of these workers by paying very high wages.

These organizations are crippling the cities ability to deliver services, if wages were 2/3s of what they were now, they could hire far more employees and potentially provide better services all around.

Additionally, public sector unions are completely different than private sector ones. Concessions should be made to workers at the expense of capital not workers who make less than them.

You just answered your own question about why cops and firefighters in NYC get paid so well: there's tremendous demand for their services.

And the average cop almost certainly provides more value to society than the average programmer working on yet-another-CRUD-app. If wages were 2/3 of what they were now, even more companies could afford to higher programmers to build them custom CRUD applications to make their basic business processes more efficient and provide better services all around.

No there is tremendous demand to work in those fields, a demand that is not being met because of price fixing. They could lower their wages and hire far more people to provide better services.

There is no wage fixing in the tech industry in a way that results in people getting paid more.

The preference at companies like google for hiring from a small list of schools is self perpetuating and drives up wages.

Worse, as with every other artificial limitation on hiring it actually lowers the quality of their employees.

Google and other top companies don't just hire engineers from a small list of schools though, additionally, they hire tons of people from industry.

The majority of hires at FANGs went to state schools with huge student bodies and reasonable acceptance rates.

preference != requirement. Some companies prefer to higher from a specific state school, that again causes them to pay more for less talented applicants.

Suppose you have two applications one with your hidden preference and one without. If your preference has say slightly less experience or requires slightly more pay, well they are a slightly better applicant in your mind so that’s ok.

Why shouldn't they?

middle class != median income

Yes it is, the entire definition of middle class is median income. Just because the quality of life for the people within this income range has gone down does not make them any less middle class than they were before.

>the entire definition of middle class is median income

Nope. Middle class is a class of people, not an income range. They are typically described as people that work in stable salaried employment, with a pension or retirement plan, with the ability to afford a house with their spouse and education for their kids.

Either way, a single person making 60k would put them in the middle class should they have a spouse making the same amount. The real median wage is a little more than half of that.

Not at all. Let's run the numbers. The average cost of a 1 bedroom[1] apartment in the city nets out at $43k for the year, that's an entire spouse's net salary [2]. Average cost of childcare is anywhere from $15k-30k annually[3]. This is just baseline needs for two working parents.

1. https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-new-york-rent-tre...

2. https://neuvoo.com/tax-calculator/?iam=&salary=60000&from=ye...

3. https://www.nyu.edu/employees/life-wellness/family-care/chil...

NYC has tons of people who are living in rent regulated housing, but ignoring that, the average price is still shifted upwards by tons of apartments in manhattan that cost far more than the median. So assuming everyone is paying market rates, it's still not difficult to find an apartment that costs less than 2000/month, just look at zillow.

Additionally, childcare costs fall dramatically once your child is 3/4 years old as NYC has universal pre K with later cutoffs than other parts of the country. There would also be additional tax savings if you were married.

Add on the fact that you likely have far lower transportation costs than households in other parts of the country, and it makes more sense. Couples with a child who make 120k a year in NYC would not be precariat like members of the working class, they'd be able to save money and likely buy a home someday.

Just because they might be better off somewhere else in the country, doesn't mean they're not middle class. The middle class still struggles with more limited options around finances, what I will say is that the amount you need to earn to be in the upper class in NYC is far higher than in other cities.

No, wrong. It's not sooooo much expensive to live in NY unless you live in Manhattan along with bankers and media tycoons. In fact, most folks who work in Manhattan still come from outer boroughs and suburbs like LI, Queens and Brooklyn where the cost of living, especially rent, is nowhere as crazy. In fact, until a decade ago, Manhattan wasn't seen as an ideal place to raise families and most middle-class folks lived outside the city.

And you know this cause you have family and friends that live in LI and commute to NYC for work everyday like I do? And just to prove you don't know what you are talking about, below are links to a cost of living calculator

West Palm Beach Florida - 85K https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/

Queens New York - 130K https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/

I know so b/c I grew up and lived in NYC since 1990. It's somewhat laughable to hear someone who claims to know so much about the city where the median median income is only $55k making such absurd claims to justify NYPD cops' $150K salary.

I personally don't have any problem with cops making that much money as long as the city is safe and they are not cheating the system. Having worked as a public servant at a less-offending NYC agency, however, the problem I see is that everyone is out to milk the system as much as possible and there seems to be almost little or no control over this (ie, wage inflation among "certain" class of public servants or opportunists).

Thank you, racist cops in NYC along side corrupt subway officials get to make competitive upper middle class wages, while public defenders and social workers get their budgets cut.

> below are links to a cost of living calculator

For a family with two children. Divide $130k in half and you get a realistic $65k each before taxes. (The calculator has a tax line item.)

Note, too, that this blends Astoria and Flushing. Friend of a friend is a single mom of three living in Jackson Heights on less than $65k. She commutes in by subway + LIRR or subway + ferry, using the time to consume audiobooks.

LI has crazy property tax. Most places in the outer boroughs in nice neighborhoods are still very expensive, and it can be quite the commute. NJ workers have to also pay NYC income tax in addition to NJ income tax.

Having lived in NYC for the first 20+ years of my life, I was sad to have to relocate, but the finances are just so crazy.

Hey in some places, you can work ONE shift and get paid for double pay.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-drop-one-day-rule-...

And many use (or abuse) disability program and earn half a million or a million easy.

Another very 'progressive' city.

Actually working or the phantom overtime that's popular with many big city police departments?

Not saying all cops are overpaid, but probably a healthy mix of the two:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2018/04/16/leaked-ny...

Some seem to believe NYC is one of the most progressive places in the country, but may not realize it's also known for most corrupt politicians and public servants.

>Some seem to believe NYC is one of the most progressive places in the country, but may not realize it's also known for most corrupt politicians and public servants.

Boston is terrible but nobody notices because NYC is nearby. NYC is pretty bad but they look good when compared to NJ that's the same but doesn't have the money to cover it up. NJ points at Chicago and say "well at least we can afford to buy the court system so our politicians stay out of jail".

I had a family member in state government. Even in some unremarkable department corruption is everywhere.

There was a Greek philosopher who said something like "more laws = more corruption". He was on to something. Too bad being in favor of big government is a prerequisite for being "progressive" these days.

Well if your platform is "Some Greek guy said something one time that agrees with me, I'm not sure what he said exactly", no wonder not many people are aligning themselves to your cause.

"Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tacitus (he was Roman, my bad.)

It's not so much who said it as someone said it a long, long time ago. This is the societal equivalent of someone complaining about a bug in the alpha version then the bug winds up getting shipped.

Isn’t FAANG starting getting there?

If officers who put their life on the line in the most populated/congested city for 150k are overpaid, then I'd like to talk to some software developers in San Francisco.

Being a police officer is less dangerous than being a house painter, convenience store clerk, taxi driver, or any of a multitude of jobs in which you are not given a stick and a gun and encouraged to use them freely.

Being a cop in NYC is statistically not very dangerous. Sanitation workers also put their lives on the line. And have more deaths.

Probably more dangerous than the software developers.

Given that nearly half of work-related casualties police officers experience come down to things like heart attacks on the job, I'd be interested in seeing the statistics. Sitting in front of a computer cannot be good for long-term heart health.

Either way, it's more dangerous to be a pizza delivery boy than it is to be a cop.

Yes, because there are thousands of people who'd happily take their job at 60k and are just as qualified to do so.

For what most programmers do, you're absolutely correct that their are plenty of people qualified to take their job for much less money.

Except that's not true as it stands right now, because if it were, companies would pay that amount since the private sector relies on markets to make decisions in a way the public sector often doesn't.

Have you ever seen an MTA job fair, thousands of people are fighting for jobs that are considered low skill when you start where they train you on the rest. They should lower wages until that line dies down and to maximize hiring with the same budget.

VCs have distorted the market for programmer salaries to the point that they are artificially 2x-3x what they should be in the absence of VC funding. When that bubble bursts, programming is going to return to its historic means, especially when most businesses start calculating the actual costs and benefits of the software they use/need. Until then, enjoy the party while it lasts.

I have to still disagree here, top tech companies have massive profit margins and could easily pay their employees far more than they do now. It's all about how much you prioritize talent, this said I would expect a deflation of new grad salaries with an increase in senior/principal salaries over the long run as is comparable with other human capital intensive industries like banking and consulting.

And live in NYC? That's poverty level.

No it's not, there are millions of people living in NYC on half of that and they are supporting on average 2.67 people with that much money. Just because you cannot afford lower manhattan market rate real estate doesn't mean that you live in poverty.

I really wish people would stop abusing the word "poverty" until it has no meaning.

$60k is not poverty in New York City. I know many families who live there, 100% of them make under $60k/family/year.

Probably renting outside of Manhattan. In Jersey. And commuting for 2-3 hours per day. That might not be poverty but it is suffering.

Stop.

No they don't live in Jersey, otherwise I would have said so. The demographics show is not remotely unusual.

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