Re: Paper shuffling Federal employees average $72,000.00 per year!

 On May 12, 6:58 pm, niedne...@gmail.com wrote:

The article didn't say what "average" meant.  There are three types of
"average":

mean:  add them all up and divide by how many there are
median:  the one midway between the highest and lowest
mode:  the most frequent one

Your anger level suggests that you believe the modal salary is
$72,000, or
that there is some sort of bell-shaped distribution with a lot of
employees
making $72,000.  Perhaps there is, but there's no way of telling from
the
information provided by CBS News.

If they meant the mean, then it doesn't follow that anybody in the
government
makes $72,000.

Likely they reported the median number, which says nothing about how
many people
make $72,000.  If the government had five employees, and three made
$20,000,
one made $72,000, and one made $1 million, then the median would be
$72,000,
the mean would be $22,640, and the mode would be $20,000.  Cutting
that top
salary in half would not alter the median or the mode.

That $72,000 counts benefits, which the employee does not see in his
paycheck.
It could be argued that if the employer did not pay benefits the
employee would
see more in his paycheck, but that is not universally the case.

  wrote:

Capitalist trickery