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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

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The whole idea of policemen “risking their lives” is not statistically accurate. Only 144 policemen died in the line of duty in the entire United States last year (https://www.npr.org/2018/12/27/680410169/more-police-officer...)

The Chicago police department isn’t exactly what most people would call “quality”.

It's not even in the top 10 most dangerous occupations: https://www.ajc.com/news/world/these-are-the-deadliest-jobs-...

It strikes me as a bit disingenuous to say it's not even in the top 10 when it's number 18, according to that list. At that point we're talking about a difference of degree, not category. If anything your citation supports the idea that police officers endanger their lives.

It would be disingenuous if he said “it wasn’t in the top 10” when it was #11. #18 is nowhere near the top 10.

Even a garbage collector is three times more likely to die on the job than a police officer.

https://qz.com/410585/garbage-collectors-are-more-likely-to-...

18 is quite close to 10, in an absolute sense. The context of that citation is a claim that it's statistically inaccurate to say police officers risk their lives. That claim is demonstrably not borne out by statistics. Out of the universe of available professional work, being a police officer is #18 in risk. It's a rather small consolation that they're not eight jobs higher up the chain in terms of risk, considering there is essentially no chance of e.g. my monitor killing me as I sit at my desk.

A valid takeaway from the cited list is that being a police officer isn't literally the most dangerous thing you can do for work. An invalid takeaway is that being a police officer isn't dangerous.

How close 18 is to 10 in absolute sense has zero meaning. So does saying "10 most dangerous jobs" without quoting actual numbers. What if job 11 is 100x more safe than job 10? What if job 18 is 100000x more safe than job 10?

Being a police officer in a suburb where there is no crime does not belong in the same analysis as being a police officer in a crime filled area. Being a parking compliance officer and an undercover drug enforcement agent also have wildly different risk exposure. To compare these various jobs similarly from a risk assessment point of view by bucketing them under "police officers" is ridiculous.

Being a nurse or care technician in a hospital is more dangerous than being a cop in terms of being physically assaulted. They are often females on 1-to-1 assignment with mentally ill men that often attempt to attack & rape them.

I'm not sure if you just intended to reply to someone else, or just ignored the words I wrote completely. Comparing these professions on a global basis is dumb. Nurses who work in environments where they are exposed to convicts or the mentally ill are at a higher risk of assault than those who work in pediactrics. Comparing risk-laden professions by just putting everyone into a gigantic bucket by a job title in order to say "which job is more dangerous" defies a basic understanding of what people in these fields actually experience depending on where their job is, their position, and their role (disclosure: son of a firefighter, brother in law of a cop, husband to a physician)

The point is, you can render specifity to the point of uselessness. Of course there are specific situations & circumstances where a given occupation is more risk prone than another, but global averages are where public perception & policy are set & laws are made. Such is life.

Full list of occupations ranked by fatal injuries per 100k workers. The referenced article isn't that useful because it doesn't provide any numbers to do an absolute comparison.

                                           Fatal injuries per
  Rank  Job                                100k workers
  ====  ===============================    =================
  1.    Fishers                            100.0
  2.    Logging workers                     87.3
  3.    Aircraft pilots                     51.3
  4.    Roofers                             45.2
  5.    Refuse material collectors          34.9
  6.    Steel workers                       33.3
  7.    Truck drivers                       26.9
  8.    Farmers, ranchers                   24.0
  9.    Groundskeeping workers              21.0
  10.   Electrical power-line installers    18.6
  11.   Misc agricultural workers           17.7
  12.   Construction workers                17.4
  13.   Helpers, construction trades        17.3
  14.   Maintenance and repair workers      16.6
  15.   Grounds maintenance workers         15.9
  16.   Construction laborers               14.3
  17.   Mechanics                           13.1
  18.   Police                              12.9
  19.   Construction equipment operators    11.8
  20.   Mining machine operators            11.7
  21.   Taxi drivers                        10.5
  22.   Athletes                             9.5
  23.   Painters                             8.9
  24.   Firefighters                         8.9
  25.   Electricians                         8.4

Why is aircraft pilots so high? I'm assuming it isn't just commercial airline pilots?

Probably includes helicopters.

The airline pilots who are flying from NYC to LA have a fairly safe job. It's the bush pilots flying between remote places in Alaska who are driving up the statistics; basically all of the fatal air crashes in the US are in Alaska.

The danger involved for fire and police is highly dependent upon geography and role/rank.

What about injuries, and the fact that they are forced to retire once their physical fitness wanes?

Here are numbers from the CDC:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/updates/upd-2-12-18.html

But as far as retiring when your fitness wanes. How is that any different than any other job that requires manual labor?

You're correct, it's not different. A lot of those jobs (construction, plumbing / steam-fitting, railworkers, auto plant workers) are unionized too.

Why does the fact that they are unionized matter? The police union is one of the strongest unions in the country and they will even protect obviously bad apples from prosecution. On the one hand, it's good to see unions protect their members, on the other police don't really need more protection from prosecution than they inherently receive just for being officers. It's pretty hard to prosecute an officer even when is obvious to most of society that they've done something wrong that any other person would get some form of punishment for simply because it's in the DA's best interest to not screw with the police, who they require assistance from regularly.

Only 144? I guess it's a matter of perception, but I'm pretty sure way less software developers died for their job.

From a sibling comment, it is the 18th most dangerous job.

Also from the article.

Leading causes included heart attacks and strokes, which caused 18 deaths. And 15 officers died due to cancers that the NLEOMF says were "related to search and recovery efforts after the attack on the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001."

Why do you consider the idea that police officers risk their lives to be statistically inaccurate? According to the United States Department of Justice, there are approximately 1,100,000 police officers in the entire country[1]. If 144 police officers died last year, a given police officer has (assuming uniformity) slightly greater than a 0.01% chance of dying each year. In other words one out of every 10,000 officers is killed.

Assuming surviving one year does not impact the likelihood of dying the next year, over a 20 year career a police officer then has a 0.26% chance of dying in the line of duty. We can expect that slightly greater than two out of every 1,000 officers will die prior to retirement.

___________________

1. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/nsleed.pdf

From another post, that doesn’t rank being a police in the top 15 most dangerous occupations.

https://www.ajc.com/news/world/these-are-the-deadliest-jobs-...

Okay, but it is listed in the top 20. What you're citing doesn't seem to support your thesis; in fact, it appears to refute it. With that in mind, and considering the foregoing back of the napkin math I presented, I'm still not following how police officers don't endanger their lives.

About a third less than garbage collectors....

https://qz.com/410585/garbage-collectors-are-more-likely-to-...

Does that mean we should pay garbage collectors more in hazard pay than police?

Statistically speaking, yes, if your compensation model pays commensurate with risk. But I'm not sure I see how that's relevant to the discussion at hand.

You started by saying that the claim that police officers risk their lives is statistically inaccurate, with a citation. I countered that citation with one of my own and a calculation showing they do risk their lives. Now you are talking about garbage collectors and their exposure to risk being greater than that of police officers.

That doesn't really counter my point about police officers' lives being exposed to risk, because I never made a claim that police officers are exposed to more risk than garbage collectors. Likewise I'm not forwarding a normative point about whether or not people should be paid commensurate with the amount of risk they encounter in their professional work. I am making the narrow, positive point which is that, objectively speaking, police officers are exposed to risk (and this is borne out by statistics).

I'm not in a position to make a normative claim about whether or not (or how much, in an absolute sense) we should compensate people more for risking their lives. I'm not sure if you were expecting me to say that garbage collectors shouldn't be paid more than police officers in hazard pay. But if we are assuming a system that pays commensurate with risk, then I'm happy to agree it would be internally consistent to pay garbage collectors more than police officers in hazard pay, sure.

To say someone "does not risk their life" is meaningless really. What OP probably means is "not risking their lives to an exceptional degree". Born out by a comparison to jobs that might otherwise be classed as lower risk

No. Garbagemen should have life and disability insurance.

Police and fire employees tend to live shorter lives due to specific conditions related their occupation. It’s apples and oranges.

According to another post, the study attributed much of the difference to shift work and bad eating habits that may result from shift work. This also isn’t unique to police work among blue collar workers.

When killed in duty, it's most often due to a traffic accident. [0] Garbage men die when their own truck runs over them.[1] Additionally, trash collectors get a lot more repetitive stress injuries. The cause of death for garbage men is just as intrinsic, to their job. It's just that the sanitation workers' union isn't as politically popular.

As for firefighters, it's literally no more deadly than being a painter (8.9 fatal injuries per 100k). They're both climbing tall ladders with one hand. It may not be romantic to say that, but that's the actuarial science.

[0] https://qz.com/410585/garbage-collectors-are-more-likely-to-...

[1] https://consumer.healthday.com/encyclopedia/work-and-health-...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/cancer-biggest-killer-...

Have you spoken to any police officers lately about their jobs? My next-door neighbor in my hometown was a state policeman who had guns and knives pulled on him several times in his career (during ordinary traffic stops, no less). If you're a cop working in a high-crime area, you're going to be dealing with the worst of society on a daily basis. I'm very thankful that my computer can't sporadically decide to physically attack me while I'm at work.

We pay soldiers who literally go into war zones less than what we pay officers typically. I'm if the opinion that we should pay soldiers more and gurantee lifetime healthcare for soldiers, but at this time it does put the actual risk into perspective. Healthcare workers are also routinely put into danger, as are security guards, and really any position that deals with the public on a regular basis. I'm not sure police officers really have a strong argument about being more dangerous because of several occasions of violence or risk of harm, obviously it's a non-trivial risk, but they typically should have body armor and training to minimize the risk that others may not have access to.

This just happened in SF the other day:

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/br09xb/bystander_vi...

Police and Fire work is hard on employees, reducing their overall life expectancy materially.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734369/

You can say the same about a lot of professions, particularly blue-collar.

From the paper:

>A recent study suggested that overweight and obesity were more prevalent among law enforcement personnel than the general population (Ramey, Downing, & Franke, 2009) and lack of regular physical exercise is one of the occupational risk factors contributing to the higher prevalence of elevated blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, and CVD among emergency responders such as police officers (Kales, Tsismenakis, Zhang, & Soteriades, 2009).

Lay off the donuts.

Just pay them market rate and give them 401ks like everyone else - what am I missing? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

> Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

Because the politician who agrees to the largess will be long gone before the bill comes due.

Not sure how to fix this, but generally I think some sort of additional checks and balances should be required whenever government takes on huge future liabilities.

Easy to fix, ban long term compensation agreements. If a union wants an annuity, they can go buy it from an insurance company. No need to negotiate anything other than cash salaries. Unfortunately, not enough taxpayers vote to offset the government workers voting themselves benefits as a bloc.

And sadly every time we grow the size of government by assigning more responsibilities to government, the larger that voting bloc grows. In states favoring big government, this can only end badly. Although they can always raise taxes to address shortfalls, this has limits as it eventually drives those paying the most taxes to low-tax states.

A lot of states do this. Florida Retirement System for public employees is mostly paid for through managed assets.

Doing this requires spending money now. You can get away with funding pensions with IOUs much longer than you can do it with a salary or 401k. Further the benefits of solving this kick in long after you are out of office, assuming no one breaks your system before then.

> Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

Time horizon arbitrage.

The elected politicians care about things looking good the next 4 years. The employee unions care about the life long outcome for their members.

Public employee unions.

Public employees don't have a market rate...wat

> Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises

Well, yes. It would be a default. But more money has been spent than is there and there are only three pools to draw from: taxpayers, services and creditors. (Creditors include both pensioners and bond holders.) At this point, multiple pools have to be hosed. It’s just a matter of when and to what degree, with the hosing being less extreme the earlier it’s dealt with.

In all likelihood, the city will go bankrupt and have creditors cut services in federal bankruptcy proceedings, thereby imperilling the city’s long-term tax base. State, being unable to go bankrupt, will probably hose creditors more.

They were promised something by the city that couldn’t be delivered to them. There’s no other way out.

Is there a difference in Silicon Valley workers being promised future stock if they just forgo their paycheck for a little while longer? The Difference of courses that taxpayers don’t foot the difference.

Silicon Valley workers also don’t work for the taxpayers, so that would be another difference. Who would pay public employees if not taxpayers?

Differences between silicon valley stock and city pensions are

1) stock options are a known volatile thing rather than a government backed guarantee.

2) Missed Stock options are much easier to compensate for financially than a pension. If you miss stock options, you are still part of the wage pool. If you miss a pension that is much harder. After all, the point of a pension is to take care of people who are 'worn out'. Hence, there is much less of a fall-back system for missed pensions.

The current proposed solution is just to cut back benefits on new job offers - though obviously if they cut back too much no one decent will want to work there.

Because there is some glut of smart qualified people gunning for those public sector jobs?

I've met plenty of idiots who worked in well-paid private sector jobs, and plenty of smart people who worked in government jobs.

Not true - if it were, every minimum wage, overworked job would go unfilled.

Minimum wage overworked jobs have a hard time attracting people with alternatives.

I would think quality recruits are already avoiding Illinois in general due to the future share of tax revenues that will need to be diverted to pay for prior years' labor, meaning less resources for today and the future's quality of life.

On the flip side, Chicago pays their teachers, police and fire fighters pretty good annual salaries. I imagine that outweighs their analysis of future benefits as a share of tax revenue.

I don’t think the fix is removing pensions from old people, but rather drastically reforming pensions for future retirees entering the workforce now.

Cutting pensions now would be like cutting someone’s salary and would likely lead to skilled people quitting.

So cut compensation for current already underpaid employees to shore up retirement for the people who voted for the politicians who caused this?

That doesn't taste right to me.

The aarp is a powerful propaganda machine.

I don’t think reducing compensation for future employees through reduced pensions shores up retirement for current employees or pensioners. For that you have to raise taxes a lot, I think. My suggestion was to prevent even worse problems in the future.

I think the current folks are hosed because raising taxes on the middle and working class along with rich people is unpopular so I don’t think elected officials will want to do that. So they will probably chug along and then go bankrupt, hosing pensioners.

What about unvested obligations for current workers like 3٪ of highest pay going to 2٪ for all pay after now?

You can’t cut the pension for the retired, or the soon to be retired. Instead you try buy outs and phase them out. New workers get 401ks. Old workers get pensions. Middle aged workers get a choice.

30 years later, the pension holders are dead, or your company is. Either way, it’s no longer a problem.

The feds went through this back in the 80s when they switched from CSRA to FERS+thrift (basically a 401k). I think that helped but didn’t completely solve the problem. But at least they are more solvent than Chicago.

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