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Skyrocketing pay shows
lax city management
Re: “City-worker costs have skyrocketed” (Page A1, Aug. 23).
Is anyone as outraged as I am about fire captains earning $703,815 in wages and benefits? Do people realize how ridiculous that is?
That’s what gives government a bad name. Where I grew up there would be a crowd of angry people marching in the streets in protest. And don’t tell me these employees deserve it: It’s lax political management and government unions.
People living in the private economy pay for these guys. Don’t tell your kids to struggle to be a lawyer or a doctor; tell them to be a fireman in today’s world. Private employees are being cheated.
Dan Janson
Los Altos
Hard data shines
light on city spending
Re: “City-worker costs have skyrocketed” (Page A1, Aug. 23).
Really excellent article about the spending of cities on their employees. It is astounding how some cities spend as little as $500 per resident (such as my city of Cupertino) while others spend as much as $7,000 (such as San Francisco).
Do San Franciscans really get 14 times the benefit from their city workers that residents of Cupertino receive? And it is even more astonishing to learn that an “Electric Crew Foreperson” received $852,000 in compensation in 2023. Silly me. I thought it was just the Silicon Valley tech workers and lawyers who made the big bucks in this state.
As an engineer, I know that there is nothing like hard data to shine a light on what is actually going on. Good job in finding these.
Thomas Trankle
Cupertino
U.S. economy better
off in Democrats’ hands
Re: “Electing Democrats will echo into the future” (Page A6, Aug. 22).
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The writer of the letter predicts that Democrats will make the national debt “soar.” The writer must not have been paying attention over the last 50 years.
Since 1980 every Republican president increased the deficit (Reagan 94%, George H.W. Bush 67%, George W. Bush 1,204%, Donald Trump 317%). Democratic Presidents have done far better. Bill Clinton decreased the deficit by 150% and had a budget surplus by the time he left office. Barack Obama decreased the deficit by 53%. Biden decreased the deficit by 50% in his first full budget year.
And these vastly different performances are not limited just to the budget deficit. By most other standard economic measures (unemployment, job growth, inflation, etc.), America has usually done better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents over the past 50 years.
Stop watching Fox.
Karl Kramer
Los Altos
