… by reading this New York Times article about some non-profit employees in New York City. Because non-profit Form 990 filings with the IRS are public, the salaries of the five highest paid workers become available at Web sites such as guidestar.org. The union guys who roll pianos around on the stages of Lincoln Center will earn an average of $290,000 this year. Their counterparts at Carnegie Hall earn between $330,000 and $420,000 per year according to the article (the actual Form 990 for 2006 shows, on Statement 18, that the five highest paid stagehands at Carnegie earned these amounts plus an additional $75,000 to $107,000 in contributions to benefit programs; i.e., the total compensation for one guy was $535,000 per year).
Comparison: Average medical doctor in Manhattan earns $192,000 per year (source).
“Musicians should be so lucky to have a strong union like that”, said a violinist.
It’s not luck; it’s a historical willingness to break people’s kneecaps. $403,716 a year (including benefits and deferred compensation) is what’s known in the trade as “social justice”, but only if your value to the company is that you aren’t breaking their kneecaps. If they pay you willingly, then it becomes “obscene” and you’re “greedy”.
It seems odd that a medical doctor in Manhattan basically makes the same as a medical doctor in Milwaukee, does it not?
Using the consumer price index, $327K in NYC is about $175K in Milwaukee. A Milwaukee mid-career ER doc can expect to earn about 185K/year. I saw a blog post that said mid career ER docs in NYC make $229K. So that must mean Milwaukee values its ER docs more than NYC since the relative purchasing power is much greater. In fact, if Phil’s source is correct…basically NYC doesn’t value any of its doctors as highly as Milwaukee. Note to self: If I’m to be a physician and move to NYC I shoulda stayed in compsci.
JP: We don’t (yet) live in a fully planned economy. Thus it doesn’t matter how much Milwaukee “values” its doctors. Other than government and union jobs, salaries are determined by supply and demand. If there are more medical doctors who wish to live in Manhattan, per capita, than in Milwaukee, the salary of a NYC doctor will be lower than the salary of a Milwaukee doctor.
A primary student values her flight instructor highly, but she pays him a market-clearing wage that seems quite low given the consequences of the flight instructor not being in the aircraft.
I arrived at the conclusion that there were potentially more ER physicians per capita, but NYC has the longest ER wait times in the country(source), so I then thought this was impossible without looking it up.
It turns out that this is actually very true for all physicians (can’t find stats on ER specificially). (NY 4.5/1000 WI 3.1/1000).
I actually just found a post where it seems reasonable for an ER physician to make 400,000/year. If this is credible it blows my salary stats out of the water, so maybe this is all for naught anyway. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_money_do_ER_doctors_make
Funny you should mention the flight instructor scenario. My first full lesson is Saturday.