Speaking of Google

Not to reignite old posts, but I had the pleasure today of reading two articles about Employee compensation.

The first is that old saw from USA (on a mission obviously since they love publishing these) about how Federal workers are getting fat and happy on huge salaries and how the Republicans are going to try and crush Obama's proposed 1.4% raise for all us spoiled workers. Well, I for one am willing to give up the 1.4% if it helps the country recover (although I doubt it will). I also hope that these Congresspeople are willing to sacrifice as well. They live pretty well and bring up the average for all of us. The salary for the rank and file House Rep. and Senator is $174K a year. The Speaker earns a cool $224K. They get the same benefits as everyone else in government. And their wages affect those for all judges and the like.

For a pretty well balanced look at this debate see The Federal Salary War . It is pretty much a lot of smoke and mirrors.

My favorite part of these articles is when the Cato Institute says, "BLS data shows that a federal employee is more than 8 times less likely to quit than a private sector employee. We’ve argued that this indicates that federal employees recognize that the generous combination of wages, benefits and job security is hard to match in the private sector, so they stay put." Of course, you idiot. So we should raise job insecurity and the struggle to hang on the middle class status as some sort of higher value? Why such disdain for the American worker? The ultimate value of any job, or any product really, is what someone else is willing to pay for it. Why is it fair for a Wall Street banker to sew up sweet pay deals and compensation packages, but unfair for a middle class American to have some job security and a decent salary? The bankers say they have to pay a lot to get the best and brighest. This leads me to the second, happier article.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is offering its people 10% raises to retain them. Yeah for Google and it's "do no evil" mantra.

The irony is striking. Google has obviously highly skilled employees that it values. The government does too. It employs an awful lot of IT specials, Cyber security specialists, doctors, lawyers, technicians etc. And these people have to be paid adequately to keep and retain them. And we won't mention how many private sector jobs the government subsidizes through tax incentives and the granting of contracts. The American people deserve the best and they aren't getting it. The American people suffer when the federal government, ah-hem, can't entice the best and the brightest. Those guys move over to Google.