Sorry, but I don’t buy a lot of your points jpinpb.
First, I don’t think zillions of people made money on the bubble because their salaries went up.
Second, I don’t think that public sector employees had the ability, en masse, to go out and make more in the public sector.
Moreover, I reject the assumption that there are not people out there who would, and are capable, of working as a cop for less. If this were true, we would not be able to fill the ranks of the military.
With waiting lists for these jobs I know we’re not anywhere near to testing the limits of how low compensation could go.
I personally know quite people in law enforcement. Moreover, I know people going through the application and hiring process and have done the same myself.
Departments often put candidates through the process to determine who is qualified and just because you’re qualified does not mean you’re off to the police academy. Rather, you’re put in a queue, on a list, until there is an opening. The fact is there are many more QUALIFIED people willing to do these jobs than there are jobs available. We can know for certain that we’re paying too much up until the point we can’t fill the positions in a timely manner.
Unions in many industries and fields have ruined things for their constituents as they’ve struck and extracted so many wages that either the jobs go overseas or the employers collapses entirely. I’ve found that many of these people have a very, very, unrealistic idea of what they are worth outside their union job.
Lastly, I would like to clarify that I don’t blame police, fire, and other government employees for the largess they enjoy. I blame the politicians who bought their votes with unnecessary compensation packages, the bureaucrats they hired to put these packages together and make other employment decisions, and the people who kept voting them into office.
