patrick.net

The Lefty supports astronomical salaries and pensions? Today must be Opposite Day.

bob2356 says

Running a 3 billion dollar university and hospital with a salary of 1.7 million isn't outrageous. Sorry, but it just isn't.

Maybe that’s the problem not an excuse why is it a 3 billion dollar university/hospital, because they are overpaying paying people ridiculous sums of money.

bob2356 says

Running a 3 billion dollar university and hospital with a salary of 1.7 million isn't outrageous. Sorry, but it just isn't.

I do not see why any public servant should earn more than US President, which is 400 K/year and arguably is a more difficult job.

And why should some, more equal people get non-social security pensions when most can only dream about it?

RafiMaas says

I believe if one is paying high taxes then they are also paying into their retirement package.

The maximum monthly Social Security benefit payment for a person retiring in 2016 at full retirement age is $2,639.

RafiMaas says

FortWayne says

High taxes on people who have no retirement benefits

I believe if one is paying high taxes then they are also paying into their retirement package. It's called social security. Don't let anyone take your retirement package from you.

Social security, no matter what will never match a pension. It's bread crumbs in comparison.

That's outrageous. 76k a month is basically 10m in lifetime annuity. Obviously the design of the pension is flawed.

The problem with pension is these deferred compensation will be felt later. It is not similar to a 3b company because all you are asked to do is provide government services. Those $$ just takes away from other public services.

Earning a high salary as a university president should not be an issue. However, the pension calculated off that salary needs to have it's own rules. They use the formula for middle class americans and apply it to that and it yields incredible sums of money ad infinitum. Pensions should be capped at 100k per year. What's more offensive is the 100 deans and vps that permeate the university.

There should just be a cap on pensions.

pensions should be capped to match social security, this way government has interest in making sure that social security stays alive.

theoakman says

Earning a high salary as a university president should not be an issue. However, the pension calculated off that salary needs to have it's own rules. They use the formula for middle class americans and apply it to that and it yields incredible sums of money ad infinitum.

PERS has been screwed up for 30 years. I lived in Oregon and know all about it. It is far from front page news in the sunday NY Times.

Yes they need to redo PERS rules. Or better simply pay into an IRA and forget about managing pension funds. There is always too much temptation for the government to under fund or dip into them. Of course there isn't any reason IRA's can't be dipped into also. It's been done in Europe. The government requires fund managers to invest some percentage of the IRA into government bonds. It will happen in the US too when things get tight enough.

Reality says

more production but only luring the smart minds away from the productive sector

Yeah, whatever we do, let's not be putting good minds in education or law enforcement. THey can't do anything for next quarters earnings per share there.

theoakman says

Earning a high salary as a university president should not be an issue. However, the pension calculated off that salary needs to have it's own rules. They use the formula for middle class americans and apply it to that and it yields incredible sums of money ad infinitum. Pensions should be capped at 100k per year. What's more offensive is the 100 deans and vps that permeate the university.

Yes, exactly correct on both counts. Especially this: "They use the formula for middle class americans and apply it to that"

That's a gaping flaw in the govt pension system.

I would take it a step further and rip the fuckin shit outta the hands of the current overpaid pensioners.
They never deserved it to begin with.
How many people have to suffer because of libeal governmental miscalculations?

marcus says

Pensions should be capped at 100k per year.

How libbies govern...
Of course the owls are more important...

"Oregon is a blue state, but in its restive red hinterlands, tax increases are politically off limits and financial distress has been severe since 1994, when logging was curtailed to save an endangered owl. "

I'm sure that for the university to attract this level of talent, it was necessary to have a compensation package that included a robust pension. C type executives get options and golden parachutes and such, while public servants get gold plated pensions. It's all well deserved I'm sure. Or not?

HowdyThere says

I'm sure that for the university to attract this level of talent, it was necessary to have a compensation package that included a robust pension. C type executives get options and golden parachutes and such, while public servants get gold plated pensions. It's all well deserved I'm sure. Or not?

No, the public servant's package is payed by the taxpayer. Undeserved.

drB6 says

And why should some, more equal people get non-social security pensions when most can only dream about it?

I don't know. Perhaps becasue they commit themselves to service jobs and to jobs with limited upside ? Could that be it ?

BlueSardine says

How many people have to suffer because of libeal governmental miscalculations?

Conservative states don't have underfunded government pensions? Really? Are you sure?

What is the typical homeowner's unfunded liability on their mortgage ?

This pension issue is a problem, but it's also propaganda becasue people don't really understand it.

marcus says

Reality says

more production but only luring the smart minds away from the productive sector

Yeah, whatever we do, let's not be putting good minds in education or law enforcement. THey can't do anything for next quarters earnings per share there.

High salaries and pensions for administrators do not result in better education or better law enforcement. In fact, the massive expansion of college administrators in the past couple decades has resulted in the actual teaching being left to adjunct instructors who don't get pension at all nor tenure, but paid not much more than minimum wage! Public/monopoly sector economy/incentives are very different from the private/competitive sector: customers price-shop in the private/competitive sector to keep price down and quality up; if a business has high profit margin, it will attract new entrants to drive down profit margin (i.e. resulting more/better goods/services that people want, at lower cost); whereas in the public sector, when do you think funding gets raised in public school and police department? When the graduation rate is down and crime rate is up! More money spent on the administrators in those public/monopoly sectors to pay more for administrators would only attract the "smart minds" that can understand this perverse incentive mechanism therefore deliberately under-pay and under-fund actual teachers and cops on the beat, so as to result in bad results so that they can demand more funding! That's exactly what's been happening in colleges: massive expansion of administrators and administrators' pay and pensions while cutting corners on the teaching staff. The same thing in the medical industry: massive expansion of administrator to doctor ratio. This is precisely what happens in all publicly-funded/monopolistic sectors.

In public/monopolistic sectors, we need people who enjoy the type of work they do, and are relatively simple-minded when it comes to optimizing their own benefits. High pay/pension for administrators in those sectors accomplish the exact opposite, because they are not under market competitive pressure.

bob2356 says

Running a 3 billion dollar university and hospital with a salary of 1.7 million isn't outrageous. Sorry, but it just isn't.

It is outrageous because these are non-profits and/or their services largely paid for by tax money (i.e. government granted monopolies). By your math, DOD having a 700B annual (public) budget, should the secretary be paid 360 million dollars a year? and a pension of $180,000,000/yr? What about the head of the social security administration or the POTUS supervising even larger annual budgets?

Private sector (serving individual customers not funded by government) executives have to compete against other private sector companies/executives; the owners of the competitive enterprise or the shareholders decide the pay, and do so at their own peril. The public/monopolistic sector OTOH is literally socking to the taxpayers. High public sector executive pay/pension also result in less resources available to pay the front-line service staff in the public sector, as they split the given pool of tax money at any given time. There is literally no justification whatsoever for high executive pay/pension in the public sector.

marcus says

What is the typical homeowner's unfunded liability on their mortgage ?

If a banker negotiates with himself or related party/friends/co-conspirator to set up a bloated mortgage, he'd be arrested for banking fraud.

When a home owner fails to make mortgage payment, he gets foreclosed, not robbing other people to make the payment. Are we going to foreclose on a school district or a government? Are we going to foreclose on the houses of all individual parties who signed / set up the pension funds running short of money before raising taxes on the other taxpayers? Are we going to throw them in jail if the foreclosure sale of all their personal assets can not make up for the short-fall? Perhaps we should!

My point was that these numbers represent future obligations.

WE all pay thousands of dollars per year in state taxes. That money goes towards all kind of salaries and other expenses. Including debt, which the liabilites are a form of.

What percentage of state expenditures goes toward unfunded pension liabilities ?

marcus says

Perhaps becasue they commit themselves to service jobs and to jobs with limited upside ? Could that be it ?

That's pretty much every job, everywhere.

marcus says

My point was that these numbers represent future obligations.

WE all pay thousands of dollars per year in state taxes. That money goes towards all kind of salaries and other expenses. Including debt, which the liabilites are a form of.

What percentage of state expenditures goes toward unfunded pension liabilities ?

Mortgage is a secured debt. It is funded at all time: backed by the house itself, which can be foreclosed to satisfy the loan. Otherwise, the bank wouldn't be lending the money at such low interest rate at all or for that large an amount. Pension is supposed to be funded by employees themselves, not a Ponzi scam, counting on increasing number of future workers paying into it to support previous workers, or an extortion racket counting on future raising of taxes to satisfy past pensions obligations.

The most insidious aspect of gross expansion of public sector jobs and bureaucracy via exaggerated pension promises is that: such a promise inevitably leads to major war. That's how conflicting claims on wealth eventually get settled when the pie is just not big enough to satisfy all claims on it -- a war to decide whose claims don't count. The apologists for government expansion are essentially warmongers.

bob2356 says

Running a 3 billion dollar university and hospital with a salary of 1.7 million isn't outrageous. Sorry, but it just isn't.

"Sorry, but it just isn't" is not a real explanation.

Why is it not outrageous?

Reality says

It is outrageous because these are non-profits and/or their services largely paid for by tax money (i.e. government granted monopolies). By your math, DOD having a 700B annual (public) budget, should the secretary be paid 360 million dollars a year? and a pension of $180,000,000/yr? What about the head of the social security administration or the POTUS supervising even larger annual budgets?

According to KPMG audit from last year OHSU got 33 million in tax money out of a revenue of 3.1 billion. That is 1% of revenue. What exaclty is your defintion of largley?

Ridiculous to compare large federal agencies to autonomous public corporations. The mission and job is totally different.

Goran_K says

"Sorry, but it just isn't" is not a real explanation.

Why is it not outrageous?

The salary is 1/3 to 1/2 what a ceo of a similar sized private corporation would earn. For the same skills and management tasks.

Why is it outrageous? Want to provide the missing explanation since no one has so far.

bob2356 says

The salary is 1/3 to 1/2 what a ceo of a similar sized private corporation would earn. For the same skills and management tasks

This is supposedly a non-profit/public entity, so the goal should not be raking in as much $$$ as possible. It should be educating students without making them go broke.

bob2356 says

According to KPMG audit from last year OHSU got 33 million in tax money out of a revenue of 3.1 billion. That is 1% of revenue.

I do not buy this. A lot of student loan money comes from govt, and apparently is not counted in these costs.

marcus says

What percentage of state expenditures goes toward unfunded pension liabilities ?

Very difficult to find out, actually. I bet it is deliberately well-hidden/obfuscated.

Reality says

In public/monopolistic sectors, we need people who enjoy the type of work they do, and are relatively simple-minded when it comes to optimizing their own benefits. High pay/pension for administrators in those sectors accomplish the exact opposite, because they are not under market competitive pressure.

That is the key. Univ top bureaucrats collect around them an army of sycophantic "yes-men" who say that Pres is underpaid; then when bureaucrat salaries are raised, suddenly school has not enough money; they go to state and scream for more money; state gives some, but not enough; then, with screams "state does not support education" the administration raises tuition. In private business, they would eventually go broke; here there is no such constraint.

bob2356 says

According to KPMG audit from last year OHSU got 33 million in tax money out of a revenue of 3.1 billion. That is 1% of revenue. What exaclty is your defintion of largley?

This has to be a joke, right? Do you honestly think the school would have $3.1 billion revenue if not for government-subsidized student loans? and government-enforced monopoly on both the practice of medicine and dentistry (the field where the school specializes) and on the establishment of universities itself?

Ridiculous to compare large federal agencies to autonomous public corporations. The mission and job is totally different.

Not at all. Considering both patients (the ultimate customers of the graduates of the school) and students are heavily subsidized by government to pay for a services in an industry that is severely restricted in supply by licensing requirement, the fields of both medicine and medical schools are effective monopolies and oligopolies enforced by the government. It's classic "socializing the cost" while "privatizing the looting"! Those high administrator pays and pensions are one of the reasons why both education and medicine have become so expensive, while students take on mortgage-sized debt without a house to show for it while being taught by low-pay adjunct instructors.

bob2356 says

The salary is 1/3 to 1/2 what a ceo of a similar sized private corporation would earn. For the same skills and management tasks.

Why is it outrageous? Want to provide the missing explanation since no one has so far.

The market place for executives with $1.7mil+ annual salary is very small in the private sector. Most SP500 top executives don't even have salaries that big. If you honestly believe those thousands (if not tens of thousands) of university and hospital executives are just as good as those SP500 executives, then they should be forced to compete against the SP500 executives in the market place, thereby driving down the pay for the SP500 executives! Instead of warehousing them in tax-payer funded institutions away from the competitive market place and artificially creating shortage of executives in the private sector.

Reality says

This has to be a joke, right? Do you honestly think the school would have $3.1 billion revenue if not for government-subsidized student loans? and government-enforced monopoly on both the practice of medicine and dentistry (the field where the school specializes) and on the establishment of universities itself?

So post the numbers. It's true because I believe it shoudl be true isn't good enough.

Reality says

Not at all. Considering both patients (the ultimate customers of the graduates of the school) and students are heavily subsidized by government to pay for a services in an industry that is severely restricted in supply by licensing requirement, the field of both medicine and medical schools are effective monopolies and oligopolies enforced by the government. It's classic "socializing the cost" while "privatizing the looting"!

I've got to assume you are totally unaware the restriction on training doctors is the amount of funding for residency programs provided by state and federal governments. Again feel free to post the numbers on how much students are supsidized any time instead of just saying its tue, it's tue.


www.youtube.com/embed/w0MyA4XKpK8

bob2356 says

The salary is 1/3 to 1/2 what a ceo of a similar sized private corporation would earn. For the same skills and management tasks.

Why is it outrageous? Want to provide the missing explanation since no one has so far.

Yes, but private corporations are beholden to share holders, and a board (elected by company share holders) that determine compensation and severance based on a projected profit or expectations of earnings.

How was this doctor's retirement compensation determined? AFAIK, this is determined by a union contract that is negotiated by the union and the college district, not by taxpayers. It seems here, the "share holders" do not have a direct say (or as direct a say) as those in the private sector.

bob2356 says

So post the numbers. It's true because I believe it shoudl be true isn't good enough.

It's better than the 1% number (only 1% of the college's revenue came from tax payers) that you quoted to deliberately obfuscate. Are you not aware that average medical students graduate with over $160k debt? Are you not aware that specific school gets paid by Oregon State university system via cross training programs?

bob2356 says

I've got to assume you are totally unaware the restriction on training doctors is the amount of funding for residency programs provided by state and federal governments.

This is again nonsense! Just because the hospitals cry for more public funding because they waste money while limit the supply of doctors (the very purpose of founding AMA a century ago; before AMA successfully lobbied the government into restricting the supply of doctors medicine was so affordable that doctors visiting patients home to give treatment was routine). By your logic (training doctors is limited by the amount of funding for residency programs), hospitals and doctors didn't exist before there was government funding for residency programs! How dumb does a person have to be to believe in that kind of propaganda?! Do you believe schools and roads didn't exist before government funding either? How about food if in countries where government organize food production? Government involvement always result in shortage! because government is a form of monopoly. Food was just more obvious; the same thing is happening to medicine and education, only takes longer to become obvious, because people only spend a relatively smaller percentage of their life time dealing with medicine and education, compared to food procurement.

Goran_K says

bob2356 says

The salary is 1/3 to 1/2 what a ceo of a similar sized private corporation would earn. For the same skills and management tasks.

Why is it outrageous? Want to provide the missing explanation since no one has so far.

Yes, but private corporations are beholden to share holders, and a board that determine compensation and severance based on a projected profit or expectations of earnings.

How was this doctor's retirement compensation determined? AFAIK, this is determined by a union contract that is negotiated by the union and the college district, not by taxpayers.

How exaclty is this an explanation of why it's outragous for someone to have a 1.7 million salary running a 3 billion dollar enterprise. Public entities are beholden to the politicians who are beholden to the voters. If voters want to stick their heads in the sand and fail to hold their politicians responsible that is their choice. Oregon has public referendum. Anyone is free to put a referendum on the ballot to reform PERS, but it hasn't happened yet.

I would say the retirement was determined by the rules of PERS. I'm not saying it's not a lot of money. I agree PERS rules are really screwed up. For one thing they allow outside income to be included in calculating retirements. Many things are screwed up, like CEO's getting huge amounts of money for walking away from companies they ran into the ground without the share holders having any say. So much for being beholden.

Won't matter, pensions will need a bailout eventually, austerity will come along. Health care systems are leading cause of bankruptcy, eventually more of the insured will be opting out and leaving the country for medical care. Some corporations are already moving to self-insured and sending employees out of country now. Now, it's a question of who is going to move in closer to the U.S. to provide the services across who's border, or can they do it via ships docked in port. As is in the U.S. Iatrogenic disease (death by doctor), is already #3 cause of death, and of course people flock to Mexico for dentists now already.

bob2356 says

Public entities are beholden to the politicians who are beholden to the voters. If voters want to stick their heads in the sand and fail to hold their politicians responsible that is their choice. Oregon has public referendum. Anyone is free to put a referendum on the ballot to reform PERS, but it hasn't happened yet.

Yes I agree. But here it seems that there is an admission that political corruption could skew what is fair or outrageous in terms of compensation.

bob2356 says

How exaclty is this an explanation of why it's outragous for someone to have a 1.7 million salary running a 3 billion dollar enterprise. Public entities are beholden to the politicians who are beholden to the voters. If voters want to stick their heads in the sand and fail to hold their politicians responsible that is their choice. Oregon has public referendum. Anyone is free to put a referendum on the ballot to reform PERS, but it hasn't happened yet.

I would say the retirement was determined by the rules of PERS. I'm not saying it's not a lot of money. I agree PERS rules are really screwed up. For one thing they allow outside income to be included in calculating retirements. Many things are screwed up, like CEO's getting huge amounts of money for walking away from companies they ran into the ground without the share holders having any say. So much for being beholden.

If a consumer doesn't like the executive pay or executive pension at Apple, he can buy less expensive phones from other phone makers. A taxpayer can't avoid being looted to pay for the public executives and public executive pensions even if he doesn't send his kids to the school.

Indexing public sector executive pay/pension to private sector executives is of course a nonsensical attempt to enrich the super-wealthy: very high salaries are actually very rare in the private sector, whereas in the public sector due to the monopolistic consolidated nature of the public sector there are far more supposedly "high revenue enterprises." At $10k/yr in property taxes, it only takes 100k houses in a town or city to aggregate a billion dollar "revenue"; should the vast majority of mayors be pulling million-dollar salaries and pensions too? What about the heads of the tax-collector's office in all those towns and cities? Why should heads of the assessor's office be paid less? Why should the head of the school district actually spending more than half of that money be paid less? Warehousing so many times more high-paying positions in the public sector would drive private sector executive pay even higher (supply vs. demand). The idea that public/monopolistic sector executive pay should be comparable to the private/competitive sector is utterly nonsensical and would work out to be massive subsidy to the wealthy. It's as if: if a 5000sqft home in Manhattan sold for $100million, somehow the government should offer to buy every 5000sqft home in the country for $100million each! What a huge subsidy to the already wealthy home owners that would be! If the public sector executives believe they can pull $million+ salaries in the private sector, let them go to the private sector and compete down executive pay in the private sector!