At Forbes Adam Andrzejewski recounts Illinois’s tale of woe—too many people making too much money working for state and local governments:
Illinois is broke and continues to flirt with junk bond status. But the state’s financial woes aren’t stopping 63,000 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher.
Whenever we open the books, Illinois is consistently one of the worst offenders. Recently, we found auto pound supervisors in Chicago making $144,453; nurses at state corrections earning up to $254,781; junior college presidents making $465,420; university doctors earning $1.6 million; and 84 small-town “managers†out-earning every U.S. governor.
Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the 63,000 Illinois public employees who earn more than $100,000 and cost taxpayers $10 billion. Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map.
I don’t begrudge hard-working professional earning in the vicinity of $100,000 per year or a little over. I do begrudge physicians earning over $1 million, school superintendents earning over a quarter million, and people with no more than high school educations earning a cool quarter million, all paid from the public purse. And keep in mind that when that junior college president earning a half mil retires, she’ll be paid $375,000 a year or more (adjusted for inflation) for the rest of her life.
How this will be paid by a state with a declining population and shrinking economy, I have no idea.
The going rate now for a spine surgeon is $1 million/year.
Steve
Without insurance we don’t even need spine surgeons we need pain meds, legal or otherwise . Or Booze.
Which tells me that state and local governments can’t afford them.
I believe Michelle Obama’s father was one of the semi-skilled state workers making a huge salary and earning a huge pension.
Dave- They pay those spine surgeons that much because (partially) they are making tons of money off of them. That $1.4 million doc is probably earning his hospital at least a million in profit. They can afford him. They would argue that they cannot afford to not have him.
Steve
@steve, its total compensation. Does a private sector spine surgeon get a $500,000 per year when he retires?
What amused me by looking at my own zip code is all of the lawyers designated as technicians or technical employees. This is the face of technocracy in real life. Its lawyers all the way down, baby.
That’s one of the reasons I object to technocracy. In theory it means rule by experts. In practice it means rule by lawyers.
Here’s how I look at lawyers. They’re native guides through the jungle of government regulation. Docents of a maze, largely of their own making.