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I mean, yes, his base salary was $80k, but made $1.6m in "other" compensation: https://www1.salary.com/Jeffre...

Problem is, it doesn't go into what the "other" is. It's not bonuses, stock, or stock options.

$0 for the certificate, plus the hours you have to pay a technically skilled person to update your websites. But fortunately website admins all work for free, so it's still $0. Oh no wait, they don't, those skills are expensive. Or, it's free if system administrator time is valued at nothing.

Not all hosts support installing LetsEncrypt certificates for free, either.

That $40 million in savings from firing 1800 people could have been had by firing a single CEO

The B&N CEO made $5M in 2017, most of that in (rapidly declining) stock. https://www1.salary.com/Max-J-...

The expensive management that steered the ship into the rocks don't get cut: https://www1.salary.com/barnes...

Cops get paid a lot of money, considering their education level, retirement and lifetime health benefits.

Being a cop has an inherent risk. They're the police, not a wartime army. They have to take risks to protect innocent civilians. Maybe the suspect has a gun, and maybe he doesn't. Maybe the suspect is not following orders because he doesn't understand, or he's deaf, or doesn't speak English. They can't just blow away anybody who looks suspicious.

If cops don't want to take the risk of the job, there are lots of people lining up to take their place.

Kansas City cops get a median of $52,000/year, and some of them get a lot more. https://www1.salary.com/MO/Kan... http://www.kansascity.com/news...

Here in my city (Canada) city police start at $C53,500 and across Canada RCMP at $C 53,144. Selected conversions to $USD. Pension is at 60% of the highest five years earnings, including overtime and retired member is eligible for full pension at 25 years service.

City Constable, probationary, 1st 6 months: $C 53,500 $US 40,053
City Constable, probationary, 2nd 6 months: $C 58,356
City Constable, 2nd year $C 70,027 $US 55,044
City Constable 10th year $C 105,041
City Constable 17th year $C 106,986 $US 84,095
Sergeant $C 116,712 [earned promotion]
Staff Sergeant $C 128,383 [earned promotion] $US 100,914
Obviously there are other positions that pay more.
Above based on 4 days on, 4 days off, 12 hour shifts

RCMP constable, probationary $C 53,144 $US 41,773
RCMP, constable, 6 months $C 69,049
RCMP constable, 12 months $C 74,916 $US 58,886
RCMP constable, 24 months $C 80,786
RCMP constable, 36 months $C 86,110 $US 67,685
[RCMP pay and promotion is automatic with service, so renumeration will continue to rise, as follows]
RCMP corporal $C 94,292
RCMP sergeant $ 102,775 $US 80,785
RCMP staff sergeant $ 112,028 [earned promotion]

Cops get paid a lot of money, considering their education level, retirement and lifetime health benefits.

Being a cop has an inherent risk. They're the police, not a wartime army. They have to take risks to protect innocent civilians. Maybe the suspect has a gun, and maybe he doesn't. Maybe the suspect is not following orders because he doesn't understand, or he's deaf, or doesn't speak English. They can't just blow away anybody who looks suspicious.

If cops don't want to take the risk of the job, there are lots of people lining up to take their place.

Kansas City cops get a median of $52,000/year, and some of them get a lot more. https://www1.salary.com/MO/Kan... http://www.kansascity.com/news...

Crew cost isn't the only factor, but commercial pilots make a lot more money than flight attendants even though they aren't as highly paid as they used to be. average commercial pilot salary is about $129K, with a range usually between $112K-$146K. Average flight attendant salary is about $72K, with a range usually between $58K-$89K. As the AC pointed out in his reply, the cost and added weight of a cockpit in a remotely-piloted aircraft is a much larger factor.

Crew cost isn't the only factor, but commercial pilots make a lot more money than flight attendants even though they aren't as highly paid as they used to be. average commercial pilot salary is about $129K, with a range usually between $112K-$146K. Average flight attendant salary is about $72K, with a range usually between $58K-$89K. As the AC pointed out in his reply, the cost and added weight of a cockpit in a remotely-piloted aircraft is a much larger factor.

John's original LinkedIN profile is gone, now it's just John G. His full name is John W. Gamble Jr., and he made over 2.6 million in total compensation last year. A Whitepages search doesn't find anyone in Atlanta, but does find a John W Gamble Jr. (Age 50-54) in Lockport, NY. This PR release has him at 51 in 2014. According to this he is also on the board of both CyrusOne, Inc. and CyrusOne LP, a real estate company that specializes in data centers. And his "public assets" are over 7.5 million.

He's worked "in tech" long enough to theoretically "know better" than to let this happen. What did he know about security audits, and when did he know them?

You missed the part where the money gets shuffled off to a tax haven.

That's done by businesses purchasing their goods and services from a subsidiary off-shore. The CEO, however, still gets his executive compensation in the United States.

We're talking about, for example, 18.5 trillion dollars [blogspot.ca] hidden away in tax havens by wealthy individuals (not corporations hiding profits). We're talking about even Buffet, for whom we can I suppose presume that he is doing all things legally (i.e. not illegally hiding his wealth in Liechtenstein or the British Virgin Islands), saying that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. [cnn.com]

These are people who take their money, pay taxes on it as I described, put it in a foreign bank, and make foreign investments in a foreign land. Then, they don't pay taxes in their home country (e.g. United States) because their income-generating activities are occurring completely outside the tax jurisdiction of their home country.

I've known people who took jobs in Korea for 6 months at $120,000 USD/year and weren't required to pay U.S. taxes. It does seem to make some sort of sense that you can make a lot of money on activities done offshore and not pay taxes on it in the same way.

Not to mention that you just pulled some numbers out of a hat in your response, simply to make the numbers line up.

Ford Motor Company. Mark Fields, CEO. Total cash: $4,523,500. Equity (stocks): $14,298,356. Other: $435,639. Total: $19,257,495. Taxes paid on this would be (roughly) $7,625,968 million, requiring the sale of $3,102,468 of stocks. This leaves $6,672,388 of equity. If sold at a 10% gain on 15% capital gains tax, that's an additional $100,085. Total approximate tax rate: 38.776%.

You might notice the rate I came up with with the hypothetical CEO was 38.68%, a tad lower than Mark Fields. I purposely used an inflated equity compensation to allow the hypothetical CEO to reduce his tax burden by a larger margin, thus overestimating how much taxation an executive can avoid. In other words: my made-up numbers were designed to disadvantage my own argument.

Try it. Any business, any executive. I happen to be in the United States and this exact argument keeps coming up about the United States and it's provably wrong.

what happens in one case in the United States

Every case.

You're trying desperately to show no mechanism nor any understanding of how what you're babbling about might be true while just screaming that it must be because you heard it on Reddit a lot. You even pulled up a study you don't even understand, which essentially says people are playing foreign stock markets in foreign brokerages in the same way and with the same tax implications as locals doing it, but using imported money.

So in the United States, those people aren't selling a thing to someone and then not being taxed on their profits; they're not producing a thing which isn't being accounted for by our taxation; they're not smuggling their income unreported to a foreign shore and stuffing it in a nameless bank account. No, the rich people are getting huge executive compensations and paying taxes on them; then they're taking what's left of their money after taxes and sending it off to another country, where they play the securities markets. That doesn't have an impact on the United States economy.

Your explanation of what's happening (rich people moving their income away from the US without paying taxes on it) is wrong. Your basic understanding of the economics of what's actually happening is wrong. You're pretty mad about things you don't understand; perhaps you could try thinking for yourself now and then?

What is the average annual salary for Physician - Radiology? How much does a Physician - Radiology make? The median annual Physician - Radiology salary is $384,697, as of February 22, 2017, with a range usually between $334,486-$445,002, however this can vary widely depending on a variety of factors.

http://www1.salary.com/Radiolo...

That is of course just straight salary. Any physician in an ongoing private practice will be doing much much better than that.

The arrogance on display by top-level executives is astounding. Mayer is going to voluntarily give up her bonus, what a sacrifice! Of course, she didn't intentionally screw up, so it's not her fault. The fact that any other employee who screwed up his/her area of responsibility would be (and was) sent packing? Doesn't matter, the elite are not to be held accountable.

What is it about bonuses, anyway? They are handed out to top-level execs like candy - even in the case of the worst business failures, the bonuses are never docked. Note that Ms. Mayer still received $35 million in 2015. For what, exactly? Presiding over the downfall?

In 2015 Amazon had 230,800 employees. CEO pay (Jeff Bezos) was 1.68 M. Other publicly listed officers made 175k, 231k, 73k, 175k, and 7.8M. I dont see how cutting their pay in half and giving each employee an extra $21.77 per year (1.1 cents per hour on 40 hour work weeks) would make any difference.

http://www1.salary.com/Amazon-...

These numbers include equity (stock options).

The median annual Engineering Aide I salary is $45,378, as of June 24, 2016, with a range usually between $39,997-$53,985 A number of students that I worked with dropped out of college because the pay was good and continue working to this day after decades. They do the same work as engineers, but are paid about 50% less for not having a diploma.

Psychiatrists earn a lot, but I made more money as an engineer than the dentists I knew.

Looks like they make less than they do driving a taxi full-time in Denver....

"The median annual Taxi Driver salary in Denver, CO is $33,803, as of May 31, 2016, with a range usually between $28,077-$41,255 not including bonus and benefit information"
http://www1.salary.com/CO/Denv...

At $13.17 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, an Uber drive in Denver would pull in $27,394 at that rate, and that's WITHOUT benefits and bonuses.

There's a lot that I' assuming here, like a person working strictly full time as an Uber driver.....but if you were going to work strictly as a driver, you'd probably be better off driving a taxi.

FWIW, in the early 2000's when I was between jobs after a layoff at IBM (best thing that could have happened BTW) I drove a Taxi here in Denver. Taxi drivers here are all independent contractors so there is no bonus or benefits. Furthermore, because you're dealing with cash, most Taxi drivers aren't reporting their actual earnings.

Uber is different on the wage reporting level because all transactions are electronically tracked and therefore (I'm assuming) reported correctly.

Looks like they make less than they do driving a taxi full-time in Denver....

"The median annual Taxi Driver salary in Denver, CO is $33,803, as of May 31, 2016, with a range usually between $28,077-$41,255 not including bonus and benefit information"
http://www1.salary.com/CO/Denv...

At $13.17 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, an Uber drive in Denver would pull in $27,394 at that rate, and that's WITHOUT benefits and bonuses.

There's a lot that I' assuming here, like a person working strictly full time as an Uber driver.....but if you were going to work strictly as a driver, you'd probably be better off driving a taxi.

Same thing happens with kids who have money. Three friends from high school worked in the same job for years and had been promoted to high enough paying management positions while still in college that they decided that getting a degree wasn't worth it. I thought it was kind of sad because they were in no way what I would consider great job. Also same thing happened with a lot of interns I worked with. $45,000 a year is a lot of money when most of your peers are making 1/4 of that.

Even if you say the driver should be getting paid for those minutes, taking the current US median taxi driver wage of around $16 per hour (source http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Dr... [salary.com] ) (which is likely more than an uber drivers average hourly wage) that extra 5 minutes at most should be $1.33. Charging $5-$10 is excessive.

So, yeah, $1.33 for the driver; $8.67 for Uber. Fair is fair.

Expect more of this from Uber in the future as they're haemorrhaging more and more money each quarter.

This is what happens when you support a race to the bottom. Its reminiscent of the US airline industry which has pretty much completed nickel and diming everyone for absolutely everything, expect the low cost taxi industry to do the same... well if they dont go bankrupt in the process which at over US$100 million a quarter is a distinct possibility.

Even if you say the driver should be getting paid for those minutes, taking the current US median taxi driver wage of around $16 per hour (source http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Dr... [salary.com] ) (which is likely more than an uber drivers average hourly wage) that extra 5 minutes at most should be $1.33. Charging $5-$10 is excessive.

So, yeah, $1.33 for the driver; $8.67 for Uber. Fair is fair.

And the award for best flamebait post right there.

I'd argue differently. Customers are money, happy tipping customers even more money. If you piss of your customers because you excessively fine them (or even just act annoyed) for a few additional minutes waiting (which will likely be insignificant compared to traffic delays anyway) you have no customers and therefore no money, and lots and lots of time. That and the journey cost should have some padding already built in for that wait time, trying to screw even more money out of your customers is just greed.

Even if you say the driver should be getting paid for those minutes, taking the current US median taxi driver wage of around $16 per hour (source http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Dr... ) (which is likely more than an uber drivers average hourly wage) that extra 5 minutes at most should be $1.33. Charging $5-$10 is excessive.

I agree. Salary.com has some breakdowns by degree by job title
http://swz.salary.com/salarywi...
http://swz.salary.com/salarywi...

Indeed.com resume section tells a different story for new york city and silicon valley if you look at the filters on the left.
http://www.indeed.com/resumes/...
http://www.indeed.com/resumes/...
He based the statistic from a self-reported stackoverflow survey. The survey itself says 38% of the people self-identified as professional programmers, 46% as other, and 16% as unknown. So it looks like most non-professionals on the survey don't have a degree.

I agree. Salary.com has some breakdowns by degree by job title
http://swz.salary.com/salarywi...
http://swz.salary.com/salarywi...

Indeed.com resume section tells a different story for new york city and silicon valley if you look at the filters on the left.
http://www.indeed.com/resumes/...
http://www.indeed.com/resumes/...
He based the statistic from a self-reported stackoverflow survey. The survey itself says 38% of the people self-identified as professional programmers, 46% as other, and 16% as unknown. So it looks like most non-professionals on the survey don't have a degree.

A favorite target of the 'inequity' crowd seems to be Walmart.

Yes, that makes sense; they don't pay a living wage, and their existence destroys [small] businesses which do, at least to a larger percentage of their workforce.

And why not, after all their average employee makes about $15K/year, while the CEO makes $26M. Until you do math, that is. There are 2.2M employees. Paying the CEO the same as everyone else, assuming you could find someone to do the job, would result in an extra $10 PER YEAR for each employee.

There's lots of other places that you could squeeze money out of Wal-Mart besides just the CEO's salary. You've actually overestimated his pay for 2015, at least according to the official filings.

C. Douglas McMillon, President and CEO: $19,070,249.00
Charles M. Holley Jr., Executive Vice President and CFO: $7,294,712.00
Neil M. Ashe, Executive Vice President: $9,434,570.00
Rosalind G. Brewer, Executive Vice President: $9,549,184.00
David Cheesewright, Executive Vice President: $10,059,475.00
Gregory S. Foran, Executive Vice President: $19,531,039.00

But that's not all! For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2015, Walmart increased net sales by 1.9% to $482.2 billion and returned $7.2 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. So yeah. On one hand, there's a lot more executive compensation than what you accounted for in your calculations. On the other hand, that's totally irrelevant, as you said. On the third hand, it's still a shit argument, because Wal-Mart actually spent billions of dollars on dividends and stock buyback. Surely they could have given one of those seven billions to their workers.

You realize you linked to the salary for Software Engineer I, right? As in... someone with zero experience. Try Software Engineer V, at least. Then you need to take into account that he's likely not in Kansas City but in somewhere like San Francisco or New York. Median salary in SF for Software Engineer V is apparently $156k, according to salary.com.

Well I agree with that. Doctors are well-paid, and deservedly so.

The national data at
http://www1.salary.com/Physici... gives $185,194 as the median.

For a job requiring SO much education, and them likely having huuuuuge college loans to pay back, that really doesn't seem like a *TON* of money. (Plus, they have to spend a lot on medical insurance, due to sue-happy people.)

So true, HEAR HEAR! Forget about making a legible, sensible tax code like the rest of the world -- just bolster the shit you guys have got, add an imperial shit-ton more overhead, obfuscate!!!!! and then let's all get together with the lobbyists for an outrageous afterparty. Let the proles break a million IRS rules while trying to remember all the words on the 400 pounds of paper your USA tax code takes up. Once everybody is a criminal by trying to honestly file a return you can stuff those for-profit prisons full of easy prey. Keep all the loose ends tied up :)))))
 
Did I mention how much Intuit and these other fuckers are paying to lobby against common sense and for more rules, laws, secret laws and taxes? Pork for everyone!

I'm already paying more than four times that amount for Time Warner Cable! Where does that money go? Oh... here's where my money goes: http://www1.salary.com/Robert-... GREED.

When the vast majority of their workers are minimum wage or close to it, I would bet the effect is not far off. Or are you asserting there are as many or more highly paid back office workers (not all of them are very highly paid) and executives as there are cashiers and floor workers at Walmart?

According to this, their top 6 execs made a total of $75.9 M for FY 2014. A minimum wage worker makes $15K. So top 6 execs make salary equivalent to over 5000 minimum wage workers.

The local high school here only has 4 classes during a day, and I'm pretty sure the teachers get a free class period. They at least got them when I attended. The teachers I know are some of the few great teachers you don't want to miss out on having. Such employees are almost always underpaid.

Lets stop talking about anecdotes, and look at some hard facts. The median compensation package for public teachers is $75k/yr (source) and they have a median of around 3 (maybe 4) years of experience (source). The BLS states that teachers are paid 11% higher than other professionals (source). At 53 hours/wk (source, it sounds like a lot of work, but it is 3 hours fewer than most professionals, even without considering vacation time (source). Considering vacation time, teachers who use all of their days of leave work an average of 171.5 days/yr vs 220 days/yr for private sector professionals with 10 years of experience (source), which isn't quite a fair comparison because professionals with 10 years of experience get more vacation than people with 3-4 years of experience.

If you multiply this out, most professionals are working over 1/3 more hours than teachers for 10% less pay. They generally get off of work early enough to make a dentist appointment, avoiding the need to shift hours around like other professionals, and their extra hours outside of the school day are free for scheduling as they see fit. Really good teachers might be working long hours for their money. However, when they're getting paid 50% more per hr, it's clear that most are not.

If you want to argue the difficulty and stress of a job, then that would be a different matter than I've discussed. It won't be fixed by reducing hours or increasing pay, but fixing polity.

The local high school here only has 4 classes during a day, and I'm pretty sure the teachers get a free class period. They at least got them when I attended. The teachers I know are some of the few great teachers you don't want to miss out on having. Such employees are almost always underpaid.

Lets stop talking about anecdotes, and look at some hard facts. The median compensation package for public teachers is $75k/yr (source) and they have a median of around 3 (maybe 4) years of experience (source). The BLS states that teachers are paid 11% higher than other professionals (source). At 53 hours/wk (source, it sounds like a lot of work, but it is 3 hours fewer than most professionals, even without considering vacation time (source). Considering vacation time, teachers who use all of their days of leave work an average of 171.5 days/yr vs 220 days/yr for private sector professionals with 10 years of experience (source), which isn't quite a fair comparison because professionals with 10 years of experience get more vacation than people with 3-4 years of experience.

If you multiply this out, most professionals are working over 1/3 more hours than teachers for 10% less pay. They generally get off of work early enough to make a dentist appointment, avoiding the need to shift hours around like other professionals, and their extra hours outside of the school day are free for scheduling as they see fit. Really good teachers might be working long hours for their money. However, when they're getting paid 50% more per hr, it's clear that most are not.

If you want to argue the difficulty and stress of a job, then that would be a different matter than I've discussed. It won't be fixed by reducing hours or increasing pay, but fixing polity.

The way I read it, is its not an enforcement fee for a car that doesn't need enforcement. Its a $1000 tax on (I think) all cars to support local police municipal revenues so they can continue to pursue criminals where there isn't a net payoff at the end... like nearly all of them.

You should also remember that police don't just chase criminals - they're often first responders in cases of accident or emergency. Though that might be required less as more and more cars automatically signal emergencies and self-driving cars cause accident rates to plummet(not all the way to zero, but close).

Though if the average cop writes $300k of tickets a year, I have to wonder if they're actually profitable as is. A normal employee making ~$50k actually costs roughly $100k when you factor in other expenses, and that's without figuring in that police require more training than average, a vehicle office costs a lot more than a standard office(which many police have as well), the benefits packages are more extensive due to the risk/threat, etc...

Then you have to figure in the judges, clerks, accountants, and other parties that all put labor into processing the fines. It's not a high margin activity in most cases.

I'm going to go with they're going to have to find funding elsewhere as you say. I actually support this - hearing on the radio how much they screw with low level criminals to make them pay for various things disturbs me.

programmers make 500K a year, and don't work OT
Oh, not all programmers, but no welder I know make over 100k, much less 150k.

http://www.indeed.com/salary/W...
http://www1.salary.com/Welder-...

You are making 150k a year as a welder, you are working 60+ hours a week.

In CA, I don't know -- it's an expensive place to live. The average (over the entire country) salary of a patrol officer is what, $30k??? (read: a whole LOT less than 200k, but a cop is the very definition of "high maintenance".)

What the actual fuck. No, really, what? You can access Slashdot, but you can't access Google? In fact the average is $51,218. That's quite good money. Most cops will never even discharge their weapon, or have their life seriously threatened throughout the course of their employment. The ones at serious risk of one or both of these things are paid more than the baseline.

Now, let's move on to bad cops, good cops. A cop who lets a cop get away with bad behavior is a bad cop. By this definition there are almost no good cops. The blue shield is real. I think they're overpaid, given that so many cops are not actually doing their jobs, and therefore exist primarily to harass and shake down. Let me know when the massive endemic corruption in policing is over and I'll be more sympathetic to your horribly uneducated and misguided views, some of which would have been corrected using google by an intelligent person.

By the way, for the quarter ending Aug. 25, 2013 Levi Strauss reported a profit of $57.1 million on revenues of $1.14 billion, for a profit margin of 5%.

Interestingly just six men at the top (out 10,500 employees) took home $21.5 million (actually not a complete number - deferred compensation earnings, which could be more (much more) than this figure, are excluded). If their 2012-2013 pay-outs (aka "salary") had "only" averaged a million a piece then the profit margin would have climbed to 6.4%. If we looked at more execs and knew about the deferred compensation schemes, that profit margin would climb much more.

But how can we expect a man to survive on only a million or so a year?

The subway is not a jobs program. If positions are unnecessary, the public should not be burdened with the cost.

This treatment of public employees really angers me

In NY State, transit workers are not allowed to strike. They are paid far above market wages, so I think that is a reasonable compromise and something to consider when you work there. You are right, it's not about me - it's about the millions of people the few transit workers and terrible MTA management put in the position that they did. It's worth noting that the poor were disproportionately affected. During the strike, Manhattanites could walk, bike, or car pool easily enough. Most of the working poor live in the outer boroughs, and they were in a much worse spot. Me? I fired up my laptop and telecommuted - so yeah, it wasn't about me.

I don't know about your salary numbers and don't have the time to go into them,

I suspect you take the 5 whole minutes it takes to Google and compare the average conductor salary (over $60,000) to the average police officer salary (just under $60,000). Considering that you could put rookies on the trains at a whopping $37k each, you could actually save money by ensuring public safety with a cop on every single train. This is only salary - I concede that I did not calculate benefits.

$75k is starting salary for a first-year assistant professor in America. Senior professors make two or three times that.

No it isn't

There are a couple of big reasons for this:
1. Most first-year faculty are adjuncts rather than assistant professors. Adjuncts make about $58K if they manage to work full time (most don't).

2. Colleges have been cutting faculty salaries aggressively for faculty who are not yet full tenured professors. What's driving the increase in college costs is actually administration, buildings, and sports, because that's what actually attracts students to a lot of colleges rather than the actual education part.

Do you have even the slightest clue of how many police it would take to provide one for any random collection of 6 or more people at every car-pool waiting zone, or every bus stop? Seriously, have you spent even a minute thinking about this?

Oakland Police patrol officers make a median salary of around $56.8K, which as $6K greater than the national average.

Do you seriously think that city can afford to have a cop everywhere one might be needed, 24/7? Do you want to pay that level of taxation? (Judging from your slashdot Id, I suspect your aren't even old enough to be paying taxes). Would you actually want to live in any society that had that many cops?

Three crowd-funded sites, each raising $25,000, would be able to hire a whopping total of **ONE** security guard, and a poorly-paid one at that.

It's not $25,000 per year. This is for a four-month trial, so the $25,000 is only for 1/3 of a year's pay for each patrol. Multiplying that out, $75,000 per year would be slightly above the 90% percentile salary of $74,000 for a police patrol officer in Los Angeles, California. No doubt the agency will take a significant cut off the top, but that still leaves plenty to pay the guard on patrol an above-average wage.

Yes, it looks like such rough times for cardiologists.

This may not be making as much money as you wanted, but you are well above the income that most people would call "rich". You should be able to pay off those student loans in no time if you can manage to live frugally (by this I mean not spend too much more than twice the average US income) for under one year.

"Enrich a few taxi drivers"?

The median income of a taxi driver in the US is around $32,000.

http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Driver-Salary.html

Regulation is designed to enforce tax collection and nothing more. And I'm not convinced that's a bad thing, but I also feel that ride sharing, even for profit, should be legal (and that profits should be reported and taxes paid accordingly - good luck with that, I feel that the middleman should handle this, with the individual provider having to then report the profit portion, removing fuel and a possible maintenance fee).

Given the propensity of the American police responding to that sort of call to shoot first and possibly get round to asking questions a bit later on, SWATting somebody should be charged as attempted murder

While I understand your sentiment, I have to disagree with you. In cases like "SWATting" these officers have been called to a scene where the assumption is that there is an armed person who has already killed a loved on and is emotionally distraught. As most law enforcement officers will tell you, domestic disturbances are some of the most unpredictable calls to go to. So a call like this would be about as scary as most police will ever get.

Granted, there are some pretty bad police officers out there. But there are a lot more really good ones. It's just that nobody seems to pay attention to them, except on rare occasions. Go check to see how much they get paid. It's pretty poorly in most cases. The average patrolman's salary is just over $50K An entry level application engineer makes a little over $54K. Barring natural disasters, a bad day at work for someone in IT is to have to work late. How much fun do you think it is to investigate a murder scene? Or a fatal car crash with children involved? For a patrolman a bad day could include coming home in a bag. In most professions a mistake will cost the company money. For an officer it could be someones life, or their own.

How would you handle call like this? Would you allow yourself to get shot prior to opening fire? Have you ever been shot at? Judging a situation after the fact from your nice comfy chair is just a little bit different than being an active participant.

It's funny that we will spend money to go see a movie and cheer on the cop who shoots the bad guy. But in 99.9% of the times you see this in movies, the "good guy" would be criminally charged for acting the way they do. But when a cop shoots someone who feigns having a gun and does not respond to commands to submit we through a fit. The asshole that called this in is the one at fault here for abusing the system that is in place to protect us.

Given the propensity of the American police responding to that sort of call to shoot first and possibly get round to asking questions a bit later on, SWATting somebody should be charged as attempted murder

While I understand your sentiment, I have to disagree with you. In cases like "SWATting" these officers have been called to a scene where the assumption is that there is an armed person who has already killed a loved on and is emotionally distraught. As most law enforcement officers will tell you, domestic disturbances are some of the most unpredictable calls to go to. So a call like this would be about as scary as most police will ever get.

Granted, there are some pretty bad police officers out there. But there are a lot more really good ones. It's just that nobody seems to pay attention to them, except on rare occasions. Go check to see how much they get paid. It's pretty poorly in most cases. The average patrolman's salary is just over $50K An entry level application engineer makes a little over $54K. Barring natural disasters, a bad day at work for someone in IT is to have to work late. How much fun do you think it is to investigate a murder scene? Or a fatal car crash with children involved? For a patrolman a bad day could include coming home in a bag. In most professions a mistake will cost the company money. For an officer it could be someones life, or their own.

How would you handle call like this? Would you allow yourself to get shot prior to opening fire? Have you ever been shot at? Judging a situation after the fact from your nice comfy chair is just a little bit different than being an active participant.

It's funny that we will spend money to go see a movie and cheer on the cop who shoots the bad guy. But in 99.9% of the times you see this in movies, the "good guy" would be criminally charged for acting the way they do. But when a cop shoots someone who feigns having a gun and does not respond to commands to submit we through a fit. The asshole that called this in is the one at fault here for abusing the system that is in place to protect us.

If the company is big enough there should be plenty of information here: glassdoor.com. You can also look at salary.com for more generic information. If your school works with certain companies (like 12twenty.com), then you can get statistics and information based on responses from other students at your university through the school provided portal/site.

First of all, $70,000 income for two people is well above poverty. The national median income for a family of four is fifty-some thousand and the poverty line is below twenty thousand. $70k might not be rich but don't cry too much in your milk because you are doing okay.

Second of all, an entry-level accountant makes about $45,000 per year. That means you make about $25,000 a year so I assume you are a doing unskilled labor. The $20,000 difference in your salaries is the value of her education, so she'll earn enough to pay for her degree in 3.5 years. For the 48 years after that, her higher salary is gravy.

If she can scratch up from entry-level accountant to slightly higher rank accountant then she'll get there even faster than three and a half years.

If you are complaining about this, try to imagine what it would be like if you were both doing unskilled labor. That's real poverty. You're living okay on that education of your wife's. Treat her well, she's your meal ticket with that education of hers.

First of all, $70,000 income for two people is well above poverty. The national median income for a family of four is fifty-some thousand and the poverty line is below twenty thousand. $70k might not be rich but don't cry too much in your milk because you are doing okay.

Second of all, an entry-level accountant makes about $45,000 per year. That means you make about $25,000 a year so I assume you are a doing unskilled labor. The $20,000 difference in your salaries is the value of her education, so she'll earn enough to pay for her degree in 3.5 years. For the 48 years after that, her higher salary is gravy.

If she can scratch up from entry-level accountant to slightly higher rank accountant then she'll get there even faster than three and a half years.

If you are complaining about this, try to imagine what it would be like if you were both doing unskilled labor. That's real poverty. You're living okay on that education of your wife's. Treat her well, she's your meal ticket with that education of hers.

i make more than the average nurse and i can't afford to pay $40k cash for a car. i'm saving my money for a house (a liiiiiiittle bit more important).

http://www1.salary.com/registered-nurse-Salary.html

http://www1.salary.com/High-School-Teacher-salary.html

So you are calling for a 66% pay increase in the teaching profession to fix this problem? How is that supposed to work? School districts do not have the money for this. Instead schools need to look at non-monetary forms of compensation, and one of those forms of non-monetary compensation is to stop treating teachers like human garbage.

Well, as a median, it implies that it goes both up and down from there.
And
http://www1.salary.com/Physician-Family-Practice-salary.html

Suggests the median might be a bit lower, and that curve looks pretty bell (not sure if that's by definition at the source, or by actual sampling).

All experiences should be taken seriously, as you can determine trends. What I have experienced, and what I gather from your experience vs your brother's experience, is that a formal "education" doesn't get you nearly as far as experience, knowledge, and skill does.

You can compare to your area here: Salary.com cost of living calculator or using any of the many other COL calculators and statistics available, which will give similar numbers.

Pay in NJ is generally higher than other places, but not nearly as inflated as teachers pay is vs. other places. Teachers pay here is public record data and easily accessible. I have a large family that are mostly teachers, and many friends who are teachers. They have mostly chose that route because it's an easy route to guaranteed high pay and great benefits while having a long vacation in the summer. Yeah it sucks before tenure, but it's gravy once they get that. You still haven't mentioned what state your brother teaches in.