[quote=KSMountain]Apart from the financial aspect, I personally feel Police and Engineers are both *indispensable* in our current society. Not sure how you would rank one versus the other. I guess I might say the average police officer provides more benefits to society than the average engineer, but I’m not sure.[/quote]
Salary is not determined by your value to society. Like all markets, it is a function of supply and demand.
Demand for labor is driven by the importance of the job, and the capacity required.
Supply is determined by the difficulty of the job and the enjoyability of the job. Less enjoyable jobs have a lower labor supply – fewer people want to do it.
Lets say a city needs someone to keep their finger in the dike to keep it from flooding the city. Well, the demand for that position is 1. And, although it is an indispensable position, it does not require a remarkable amount of skill or training. Nor is it a very unpleasant job.
Thus, the number of people willing and able to do it is rather high. Thus, I doubt it would be a highly paid position, though clearly it is critical to society.
As I mention above, these wages are not set by market forces or supply and demand, but by union thuggery. As such, I suspect they are too high, regardless of their importantce.
In other words – if the city had offered a lower salary with a lower pension, would some other qualified candidate have taken the job? If the answer is “yes” then they overpaid. Plain and simple. Unfortunately, it is never posed this way.
