But don't carry it twice.

 Isn't it convenient when you find one shred of evidence -- however small -- to support your beliefs? It's even better when you can distort it using questionable or downright bad math so that it seems more supportive than it is. That's what Rich Karlgaard just did in his recent blog entry, The Millionaire Cop Next Door, where he argues that government workers, like cops, firefighters, teachers (yes, teachers) and other hardworking Americans are the fastest growing class of millionaires, simply because they work for the government. No that's not a misprint, he's calling them millionaires. Not long ago, these folks were the heroes of the right. These were the hardworking Americans -- the "real" Americans -- who helped keep the fabric of our country together. Remember their heroic efforts on 9/11? I guess not.

 Instead of thinking about that, Karlgaard focuses on his "calculations" which put public sector workers at 2 times the income of private sector workers. How does he arrive at this conclusion? Well, it so happens that he read this article about how police in Carlsbad, California are getting their pensions reduced, did a few calculations based on their original pensions (in his head, I'm assuming), became outraged, and wrote a blog entry.

 Let me tell you a little about Carlsbad, California. Carlsbad is ranked #43 in terms of median incomes (places with populations over 50,000), which, if you are going to take just one sample, this is one is not exactly ideal (In fact, in research, we call this a biased sample. You can look that up. I'll still be here when you get back.). Not to mention the fact that its cost of living (53% above the nation average) puts it well above New York City (35%), LA (31%), Seattle (20%) and even in the same ballpark as San Fransisco (66%). Moreover, the reason it came to Karlgaard's attention in the first place is because of the fact that the police just accepted concessions for lower benefits (that was the whole point of the article he was citing). In other words, their salary and benefits were high enough that the union was willing to accept cuts, but he focused on how high they were before like this was a typical case and instead of acknowledging what an extreme case this likely represented, even in a city in a high cost of living area likely extreme example it was. Top that off with the fact that Karlgaard (correctly) wants us to take into account retirement benefits, but (incorrectly) wants us to ignore the fact that many public employees (including the ones he cites in this very article) pay into their own retirements and you start to realize what's going on: Karlgaard is double-counting cherry-picked public employee's incomes, but not private sector employee incomes.

 My favorite part of the entry is when he throws in this red herring to make the numbers seem bigger: "that does not include health benefits, which might push real retirement compensation close to $100,000 a year." Okay,  Karlgaard, I'll meet you half-way, but let's include health benefits for private sector workers, too? no? The whole article is like a example straight out of How to Lie with Statistics, or a guidebook to logical fallacies. (This one is actually called the "red herring fallacy.")

 Of course, Karlgaard isn't comparing: he's ranting. After all, there is no real equivalent to police or fire department in the private sector, so he doesn't provide a comparison group and equivalent incomes for them. Police and firefighters never know when they are going to put their lives on the line, and events like 9/11 show that they are ready and willing to do it without a second thought. Even if they are paid twice as much, don't they deserve compensation for it? To add insult to injury, Karlgaard implies that 50 is too young a retirement age. Is he familiar with the type of work cops do? As for teachers, it is considered common knowledge (in NYC, at least) that public school teachers make more than private school teachers, but it's also known that they work a lot harder, with larger class sizes and so on, and that it's possible to teach at a private school without specific educational and teaching certificate qualifications. Assuming that's true, I might agree that the strict rules for hiring teachers and teacher seniority and so on should be overturned, I'm not sure I would go so far as to say the city is wasting its money on teachers, even if a correct version of Kalgaard's analysis showed they made significantly more than private school teachers. Teachers are an investment, just like those 401k's, it's just a matter of investing carefully.

 Well, at any rate, Karlgaard should be happy because Carlsbad is cutting the police and school budgets. Not a moment to soon: they are going to need that money for their new golf course.

Photo is a screenshot from the surprisingly relevant Futurama Season 3 episode 43: "Insane in the Mainframe"

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