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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

I keep being approached for jobs in UK gov agencies, and sometimes when I tell them they can't afford me, they ask if I mind telling them by how much. Usually their range is off by a factor of 2 to 3. I get that some people want to work in government, but I can't imagine taking a pay cut like that for any employer.

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Yep. And then they wonder why the government can't deliver anything.

(Government Digital Service being an exception, great work to those working there and reading this!)

I would love to put my skills to better use by working for the gov. Maybe it’s because I’m ex-military or just want to feel like I’m using my skills to make the world a better, safer place. I have a family to support though, the salaries they offer are way to low for me to do that on my own.

What would you expect in a monarchy?

Why would public sector pay correlate with being a monarchy?

Because it suggests that the populace is subservient and would rather put up with the charade of pretending one family has a god given right to rule than face the fear of either rebelling against them or moving to a foreign country which is wholly self determined by the people. That kind of mentality is the same mentality that will cave and accept lower pay rather than take a risk and seek out opportunity elsewhere.

Which is, of course, why more than half the countries by top 20 by GDP per capita are monarchies (after excluding microstates of course)

Yeah and absolutely nothing to do with the fact said monarchies plundered the resources of other countries for centuries and are still dining off the spoils.

Then you'd expect the GDP growth to abate after the collapse of e.g. the British empire. Yet British GDP growth has in recent decades for the most part gone pretty much in lockstep with e.g. France, which is a republic.

Your hypothesis just does not match the data.

We weren't talking about GDP though were we. We were talking about wages and pay. GDP may be high but it is concentrated in very few hands, hence you get daft job advertisements like this and you get stats saying that average wages in UK will be overtaken by Eastern European nations within the next ten years who have historically been much poorer. And if you really want to get into GDP, Britain has been sliding further down that GDP leader board for a while now with no signs of stopping.

Of the top 10 countries for median salary, 7 are monarchies. Out of the three countries above the US, all are monarchies. None of the countries above the US had an empire, and two were a part of other nations empires.

Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

Looks like you are right again. I do still think my original sentiment is true though even if the current data does not support it. I suspect (or at least hope) that in 100 or 200 years the democracies will out earn the monarchies. Personally, I think the gold standard political system everyone should be aspiring to is Switzerland.

You've got a very strange bee in your bonnet about this.

The monarch isn't setting the budgets.

Maybe he should find someone more qualified then.

He doesn't have hiring authority for the government, so that makes no sense.

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