A common justification for California’s sky-high state and local public employee pay and pensions is our state’s high cost of living. This is a valid point — sorta. California DOES have a higher cost of living and higher pay, but it doesn’t come close to justifying most of the dramatic disparity between public and private total compensation.
The real comparison is the difference in average household income among states (CA is the 10th highest state — 13.4% higher than the national average) or per capita income ranking (CA is the 12th highest — 6.7% higher than the national average).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income
But comparing California firefighter basic wages with the average firefighter’s pay in the other 49 states, we pay 60.2% higher than the other states’ average. California pays 56.0% higher for cops than is paid for the same jobs in the other 49 states.
http://riderrants.blogspot.com/2013/12/find-out-how-much-your-city-or-state.html
After all, this average California income (an average skewed higher by including the roughly 2,000,000 federal, state and local public employees in the state) is what people make who PAY the taxes. To overpay and over-pension public employees means that everyone ELSE has to keep less of what they make.
Hardly fair or equitable. Apparently it’s the left’s version of “social justice.”