The average salary of a state employee is under $50k a year, and has been studied as being 20-30% below private sector wages. Literally we could outsource all our jobs to private companies paying average private wages and every state employee would make 20-30% MORE MONEY and cost the state 20-30% MORE.

In fact state employees are losing buying power faster than many other groups. Our wage increases do not keep up with inflation so our wage is actually collapsing even if its dollar value does technical increase in the process.