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Comment by almost_usual | Hacker News Reader

>I feel like we need much tougher police that actually prevents and prosecutes all types of crime, including rampant petty theft, car break-ins, muggings, shootings (which are common), harassment by deranged drug-addicts all over the streets, etc. etc.

Pushing the police to be 'tougher' while the community is critical of their every move isn't going to happen. It also takes about 7 years until an SFPD officer makes the salary of an entry level Software Engineer in San Francisco. You get what you pay for.

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So tired of all this fucking comparison to software salaries. I should just start doing a shitty job too, and complain that it's because I don't get payed as much as doctors.

The bigger problem is that these police officers can't afford to live in the city which they work. Think for a second, about how that might affect your desire to "clean up" crime. Who's neighborhood is it? Certainly isn't yours.

It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here.

Software engineers have driven the rent up for everyone else but can't provide new housing stock, so they get fleeced by the class of commercial property owners who invest in the startups the software engineers work for. Unfortunately the software engineers have little incentive to disrupt a property market that is mostly working OK for them. The software engineers are being paid to make tools which concentrate more and more wealth, but that's OK because those people all have shitty jobs so their lives don't matter, and once they have fallen below a certain level of economic productivity they can die, because market economics is the source of all human goodness and anyone who does not prosper in the market deserves to suffer.

"It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here. "

One follows from the other, doesn't it...

well, there are also such factors as limited housing stock (and fighting any construction)

>So tired of all this fucking comparison to software salaries.

>It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here.

It's simple, pay cops more and you'll attract better cops. No different than anything else. I made the comparison to software salaries because the risk involved with being a cop is much higher than a software engineer.

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