Oooohkay... how 'bout firefighters and police officers?
Yo, Leonidas, you still out there to provide your perspective on this discussion?
I chose my profession, in part, based on the fact that I could retire a lot younger than 62 or whatever.
Where I went to work was based more on salary and other considerations, but within the first decade of work, whenever I started thinking of jumping ship, the specifics of the pension kept me where I was.
One of my career assignments was in our recruiting division, and I know how many people line up wanting jobs in police work who are
not the kind of folks you want to give guns and badges to. The pool of good applicants is small, and there is a lot of expense in finding, hiring and training them. Once you have them on board and trained, you want to keep them because by the time they are experienced in the job and doing it well, you have invested a lot of taxpayer dollars in them.
I went as far in my career as the ten-year mark frequently checking out other employers and other careers, but eventually the pension hooked me and I stayed put for my most productive years.
My former employer made a decision to change the pension system - which forced a lot of people to vote with their feet. Within a year he was faced with a lot of unhappy taxpayers who were tired of the crime rate and the daily headlines saying "Three murders this weekend!" He
tried to go on a hiring binge.
What he discovered was what we already knew. The pension, and eventually salary increases, had been keeping people at work who were going to be very difficult to replace. Not replace as in finding experienced folks, but just warm bodies to fill holes and start gaining experience. There's a war on and the demographics have changed in the last 20 years - there are fewer young people who want demanding, stressful and dangerous jobs who are
qualified (or even just
acceptable) to do them. Add to that the fact that the a lot of federal agencies went on hiring binges as well. The demand outstrips the supply.
So my former employer held the line on pensions, but he was forced to give further salary increases to incumbents, pay millions in overtime trying to cover for all the vacancies caused by retirement, raise the entry-level salaries, pay $12,000 signing bonuses, pay $2,000 referral bonuses, and spend millions for a huge recruiting drive. And they still can't get half as many people as they
want - which was a third of the people they
need.
As I recall from what my Econ professor taught, when there are fewer people willing to supply a good or service, and demand remains constant or increases, the place where the supply curve meets the demand curve goes way up along the axis labeled
"Cost".
One of our chiefs once made this comment:
"Boys, let's don't forget that the oil that the Big Blue Machine runs on is colored green." You can't escape the fact that providing protective services costs - and, at least in police work, the single greatest cost is personnel (96-97% of total budget). Whenever you start looking to whack the budget there are only so many cars, helicopters, computers, etc. that can be cut before everybody starts walking or you start cutting personnel. Given the current situation you are very quickly faced with a situation in which either you lower your standards and start hiring people you
know are going to create problems, or you try to do it with fewer folks. Or you face up the the reality that the service provided is important, in fact vital, and the bill has to be paid.
No demagogy, no wizzing on graves, just simple economics.
