It obviously can be dangerous at times but considering how many people want to be police officers this pay level seems corrupt.
This is just anecdotal but I've met far more people who want to be police officers / fireman than engineers or doctors; surely there is a large supply of eligible candidates, I can't believe that there is any shortage of capable labor to justify this almost CEO level of pay.
Are there any numbers on that? Sure, there are lots of people who want to be police officers, but that's not the same as being qualified. As far as I can find, unemployment rates among officers are extremely low, there are many unfilled positions, and officers who moved have little difficulty finding new jobs. That all usually indicates a tight labor market.
It's possible police academy is unnecessarily hard or something, but I suppose you could say that in any field (perhaps Google's hiring standards are too high, or med school is too hard).
Entry level police positions are typically very competitive. In some jurisdictions (in my area in NJ specifically), you simply cannot get hired without having connections to existing or retired officers. Getting fired is virtually unheard of. Local Colleges are filled with criminal justice majors will who never make it to an academy. The benefits, pay, power, and perks make it the ultimate job, if you can get it.
It's not to do with shortage of labor. Their salaries are high because being a cop is a life-threatening and potentially psychologically damaging profession. Some go their entire careers unscathed, some get killed, almost all have close calls every now and then. Most of them have families that care about them and know the sacrifice they might have to make one day. They deserve good salaries for their service.
Believe you me, I have many gripes about the quality (or lack thereof) of law enforcement in this country. But how much they are paid isn't one of them.
When I see news reports about IEDs on California highways I will support you wholeheartedly. Until then, I think they're way overpaid in relation to the armed forces.
I like taking walks and listening to pod casts, the problem is the opposite; I'm laughing and muttering to myself as I walk along, unnerving all those elderly immigrants.
However it is a good idea to walk without ipods/mp3 players as much as you can bear, walking helps your mind wander or meditate without having to 'learn how to breathe'.
I enjoy taking good podcasts along with me on my walks because then, streets get associated with topics. The corner next to the ugly second-hand store is now all about planning the European high-voltage power grid, and the flower shop at the hospital is about self-made bicycle computers and OpenStreetMap.
I find it hard to accept that the majority of small businesses last that long without making an operating profit, 8 years of continuous loss? What bank would accept this?
I'm referring to retail banking which is the norm outside the atypical tech start ups sector of all new entrant small businesses.
I'm assuming that a good chunk of all new businesses started are restaurants, corner stores, dentists & hair dressers etc. Surely it can't possibly be that these guys have to tough out a curve like this/face such a failure rate, which begs the question; if hairdressers can run a small business reliably then why can't a tech company aim to produce value right from the start?
Many businesses aren't funded by banks. They're bootstrapped the entire way. It's not uncommon for a business to lose money for the first few years, it's actually the norm. According to the US SBA, 50% of new businesses fail in the first 5 years.
That's a misleading statistic because the IRS only allows you claim deductions on a money-losing primary income generator for the first five years.
After that, it's reclassified as a hobby, and you can't deduct for it any more, so businesses either suddenly start submitting tax returns that show they're breaking even or profitable, or they stop submitting them altogether (have "closed" or "failed").
Companies rebrand/change their logo all the time, where in the article does it provide data comparing the rate of change of company names in down times vs the good times?
This is just fitting a convenient 'depression 2.0' story to some logo redesigns; if this happened two years ago, the same redesigns would be interpreted entirely differently, perhaps it would be about 'increasing market share in a more globalized world'.
I agree they can be light on content and oversimplify things to appeal to a broader audience, but they're usually still a pretty good starting point for decent discussions.
That's a fair point, but a balance needs to be struck, at times it seems like every other article is from a large circulation newspaper or magazine and if that trend continues it could spoil HN.
But we can all see this window on the mainstream; where HN is special is finding those whom have synthezised a clearer or more thought provoking picture of the mainstream either through direct experience or a unique perspective.
I think the distinction is between hacks and hackers. They may provoke discussion and grab attention but its just the previous media's generation's form of flaming on an industrialized scale, these articles are without the kind of integrity you get from the truly engaged and first hand experience that HN is so good at fishing out.
This is just anecdotal but I've met far more people who want to be police officers / fireman than engineers or doctors; surely there is a large supply of eligible candidates, I can't believe that there is any shortage of capable labor to justify this almost CEO level of pay.