Reader Mark Sletten sends in some information on
public servant salaries in the Land of Lincoln that shows a
continuation of the government employee double bonus.

According to
BND.com: 

State workers from the metro-east averaged $61,372 last year.
Topping the payroll were three Illinois Department of Human
Services doctors and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier,
all passing the $200,000 mark.

How do these numbers stack up against pay for the rest of
Illinois? According to
the U.S. Census Bureau, per capita income for Illinois
residents rang in at $28,782 in 2010. Median household income came
to $55,735. 

This type of premium for state employment on its face appears to
violate the consensus that government work is best compensated by
small immediate income but large deferred benefits. Instead,
government employees in the 21st century make more both now and
later. 

A popular creed holds that government employees merit this
premium because their flames are polished to a harder, more gemlike
finish. Andrew Cannon in his 2011 Apples to
Apples study concluded that paying more for the same work is
cost effective once taxpayers account for “the differences in
education, work experience and occupation between a public-school
teacher and a teen-ager working for the minimum wage at a fast-food
restaurant.”

But soft! While the pay rate for taxpayer-funded doctors in
Illinois is high, it’s within the ball park. Salary.com estimates median
physician salary nationwide at $175,161. WebMD’s MedScape puts
median
compensation for physicians in the Lake States at $201,500 in
its Physician Compensation Report 2011. I showed in
April that the widest differentials are between low-skilled
private sector and low-skilled public sector jobs. A janitor
working for Uncle Sam makes $30,110 a year, while his or her
private-sector peer makes $24,188. That’s at the federal
level. Now we appear to have a report
indicating the lowskill premium occurs in state employment as
well. 

There may be labor-theory-of-value arguments for a government to
be relatively generous toward less skilled workers. Cleaning public
facilities, the taxpayers might decide, is so much less pleasant
than cleaning private property that government needs to pay more
for its sanitation engineers. But Apples/Oranges experts are not
making that argument. They’re claiming these high salaries are the
result of open competition in an undistorted marketplace.