Saturday, April 23, 2011
Fed Salaries: Government Employee With Summer Cottage
A different perspective on federal salaries: in the 1930's my uncle was a researcher at Beltsville on animal nutrition. Had a nice house in the DC suburbs and a summer cottage near Annapolis while supporting wife and two young kids. Today I doubt an ARS scientist could manage a cottage on a single salary. Most likely he'd be saving money for college tuition. Of course, even back then a private feed company hired him away from USDA.
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2 comments:
I don't know any ARS scientists with summer cottages, though all seem to make at least as much as they would in academia. It's hard to compare the times. There were far, far fewer things to buy, and housing in the DC-suburbs and education was much cheaper (even when inflation's factored in) than now. And besides saving for their childen's educations, many ARS scientists have their own student loan payments to deal with for the first half of their careers.
I'm thinking the relative salaries and standings of academics and ministers has declined in the last 70 years. I'm pretty sure about ministers, at least in the mainline denominations. Those in the evangelical big church branch of religion may be different. Academics I'm less sure about. I guess ARS must be paying salaries reasonably competitive with academia, if not with Monsanto or whoever.
I'd also claim academics have less social status now than in the 1950's.
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