Books read in April 2022

New:

 

1. Nighttown by Timothy Hallinan

2.  Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan Metzl

 

Reread:

 

1. Kindred in Death

Can I claim to be an influencer now?

Five years ago, I blogged about the delight of having new Fluevogs and new Star Trek.

This year, Fluevog is making the uniform boots for Star Trek.

As I do for every such coincidence, I'm going to claim credit.

Building a better Sunshine List

1. Remove all names.  

 

Lately, I've been seeing people talk about expanding the Sunshine List to include all public servants at all pay levels, or even all jobs in all sectors of the economy, arguing that this would be good for equity.

 

One major problem with this plan is privacy. You can google a person - not even looking for their salary! - and you'll find their sunshine list entry. I googled the couple who bought my parents' house, and the first thing that came up was the husband's salary. Surely there's no reason for the daughter of the people you're buying your house from to know how much money you make! More importantly, your abuser or your stalker can also find your pay information!

 

Listing position titles without names will help keep private personal information private and, at the same time, remove much of the arguments and incentives against expanding the Sunshine List to include all jobs. 

 

I'd also be okay with including equity information if equity-seeking groups think this would be helpful.

 

2. List all information that goes into determining compensation. 

 

What is the position title and classification? How much education and experience does this person have? How much overtime did they work? How many people do they supervise? How consequential is their work? Do lives depend on them? Maybe also provide a link to their job description (what even is a "systems analyst"??)

In addition to making it clear that the jobs actually involve, this would also help with the Sunshine List's actual stated intent of determining whether good use is being made of public funds. For example, if a particular department is paying the equivalent of five full-time jobs in overtime, maybe that's a sign they need to hire more people? If everyone in a particular department has over 30 years of experience, maybe it's time to start recruiting some new trainees before everyone retires?

It would also be useful to include temporary and contract workers working for or on behalf of the government. How much do the outsourced office cleaners make? How much do substitute teachers make? How much do the extra nurses brought in to staff the ER during the pandemic make?

 

3. Include thresholds for how much housing each salary can buy.

 

Many people (including me in an old blog post that I now can't find) have pointed out that the Sunshine List threshold hasn't changed since its inception in 1996, and it really should be indexed.

 

But I have a bolder option in mind: include multiple thresholds on the list corresponding with how much housing that salary would buy in the current market, local to the location of the job.

 

For example, "This job makes $X per year in a location where you can buy an average 1 bedroom if you earn $0.8X and an average 2 bedroom if you earn $1.2X." 

If a job doesn't pay enough for a home big enough to raise a family in, or even for a 1 bedroom apartment, that information needs to be front and centre.

As an example of why this is important, a 1-bedroom in my decent but unremarkable condo building in my decent but unremarkable Toronto neighbourhood recently sold for 150% of the mortgage amount you could get for $100K in the current market. So someone could be on the Sunshine List and, at the same time, not be able to afford a 1-bedroom condo just like mine! (If you're just tuning in, I'm not on the Sunshine List - I bought preconstruction a decade ago when prices were drastically lower.) 

 

Conversely, if the job pays so much you can afford, like, multiple detached houses, that would also be highly informative - far more informative than just a big number!