Reply #317: I have lived in both worlds, and I'm like most people, trying to keep a roof over my head

[haele]

and required medicine for those in my family who need it. I and my household are "this close" to bankruptcy due to medical problems, but do I complain about my current private-corporation employer, who feeds off my hard work and profits off my experience in engineering, installations, and environmental sciences, and my customer, the Federal Government, who profits off my years of experience and knack for business practices? I understand that my customer is the Federal Government, and that my customer, for all it's faults, has not only the largest "customer base" in terms of the range of services it provides, is the largest employer of the middle class in the US, and it's not their fault that they are stuck being the last, largest employer of the middle class.

I have had a wide choice of careers and organizational associations spanning the Arts (both music and Graphic Arts), Education, Military, and Engineering, over the past 40 years, and chose the ones that served the purposes of keeping my family in some security and didn't expand additional resources that we couldn't afford to spend. I even made a go at running my own business pre-internet explosion, but couldn't stay afloat for more than a year and a half; too "artsy" for the area I was located in and I couldn't afford the advertising and business building costs to what I needed to charge to bring the most new customers in.

That you were able, through luck or opportunity, to get two degrees in an artistic field and make a career out of it, is admirable in itself.
But your customer base depends on what? Business parks? Community Landscaping? Campus architecture? McMansions, Recreational parkland?
A good chunk of Architecture historically relies on a governing organizational patronage, which in this country, means a tax base that can finance more than Communist salt-box residential cubes and simple CAD-program plantings.

Honestly, I don't care who is getting their wages cut or frozen. I just care that the lifeblood of this country's economy is being abused by predatory financing, indifferent corporations, socially engineered anti-intellectual resentment, and an addiction to elitist, shallow posturings of wealth through all the classes. And I hate the ease in which the elitist parasites in our society profit off pitting educated against lesser educated, working against professional, lower class against middle class, using jealousy and resentment to fuel the war.

Using your rant, why should there be a safety net of decent pay and benefits for anyone who works for another, just because most private employers aren't willing to provide that for their employees? Why should any worker follow regulated risk-reduction, safety or cost savings practices if it's going to inconvenience someone in a rush to get their project completed?
Why aren't there enough customers out there looking to pay good money for quality work?

Ultimately, Economy 101 comes into play, and if people aren't making enough money that they can spend on quality work that is basically a luxury rather than a necessity, they aren't going to spend the $75K + for the services of an architect to xeroscape, irrigate, and furnish the front half-acre of their "ranch estate" tract property so it complements the surrounding environment and increases the value of the property. And that goes directly to your Federal or State Govm't supervisor who's pulling down $150K a year, unlike his/her private business/corporate counterpart who is pulling down around $200 a year.

We all deserve a living wage, and fair compensation for our required experience, training, and work. I wouldn't even say you are making too much, and deserve a wage freeze - because looking up your average national starting salary range as an Architect on several different employment sites (and not the Los Angeles range, which is reported to be about 20% higher), it's more than my current FSE1 corporate employee position with top-notch benefits range (starting $40K), right about where a Federal Engineer level 2 (GS09 equiv., master's degree, 5 years experience)in San Diego (starting $42K) is.
If I go strictly by the published trade rates, you probably make more than most of the Federal Engineers in my customer's department do. If you go strictly by the published average rates, you'd think the majority of Federal employees make $75K or above, even though there are twice the number of GS05/07's than there are GS09's, and twice again the number of GS09's than there are paygrades above that.
When Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average income of everyone in that bar goes over a million dollars, even if everyone else there makes minimum wage.

I'm sorry if you're not making as much as the industry reports you should be making. LA is an expensive place to do business, and all wages are inflated to match that expense.

But letting the green-eyed monster run your life because someone who might not be as educated and as talented as you is making as much or just a bit more is ridiculous at best. It's not as if they're gaming the system to float wealth towards them, steal your house, invest in hostile corporate take-overs, and send jobs overseas while they buy their upteenth seasonal compound to create their own fantasy ranch.


The simple fact is, for your business to thrive, we as a country need well-paying, "middle class" jobs. And sadly, the vaunted Private Sector - even unionized - is too busy hunkering down, "making sacrifices" (to all but shareholders and corporate offices, for the most part) and "cutting fat" to employ any number of people on a permanent basis at wages enough above poverty to make enough of an economic machine that your business will thrive.

And unfortunately, your reviled public sector is pretty close to being the only thing holding the economy up.


Haele