AMY GARDNER writes in the Washington Postof the emotional injury suffered by government employees when a goodly portion of the public begins to malign them as members of a parasite class who enjoy the ample fruits of less privileged and secure workers' labour. Efforts in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere to rein in the growth of public-sector salaries, pensions and health benefits have, Ms Gardner reports, "ripped apart how many public workers think of themselves and their role in society." She considers the case of Judy and Jim Embree "an operating room nurse and paramedic and firefighter" from Ohio, who have been taken aback by increasingly negative attitudes toward public-sector workers. "The divide between those who back union workers and those who don't comes down to a matter of perception over what qualifies as modest and what is too much," Ms Gardner writes. Would you say this modest or too much?

Judy Embree earns $63,000. Under current rules, she is eligible to retire in five years, at age 54, after 30 years on the job. Upon retirement, she will be paid about 66 percent of her wages. Jim Embree earns $70,700. He is eligible to retire in two years, at age 50, after 25 years on the job. He will take home 60 percent of his retiring salary. Both Embrees could continue to work and improve their pensions; Judy Embree would qualify for 100 percent of her wages after 44 years of service (at age 68), and Jim would max out after 33 years (at age 58) with 72 percent of his final pay.

Not surprisingly, the Embrees think this just about right. The article concludes with this reflection from Mr Embree:

“No matter how it turns out, my profession is going to have a black eye for a long time, and that hurts,” Jim Embree said. “So many people believe that I earn a six-figure income and can retire at 40. It seems like they're calling into question why we're doing the job. We're not going to sound like we're poor. But we've been doing this for 25 years. We're 50 years old. I think I make enough to live on. And I think that's the way it should be.”

Mr Embree is certainly right to say "we're not poor". The Embrees' household earnings come to $133, 700, which puts them somewhere between the 85th and 90th percentile on the household income distribution. This is about twice the median household income for people their age. If both took the earliest possible retirement, and got no raises between now and then, the Embree household would bring in $84,000 per year (that's in the 75th percentile), assuming they stay out of the labour market altogether. $84,000 a year for not working at 53 and 54 years of age! Someone in good health at 54 can expect to live another 25 years. $84,000 for 25 years comes to over $2m. They wouldn't do much better winning a small lottery jackpot at retirement. And that's the low-end estimate. Of course, none of this takes into account the value of health-care benefits, relatively high job security, and low income volatility. When all that is taken into account, this isn't just "not poor", this is rich. Not rich rich, certainly. But I think it's safe to say that an income greater than 75% of all households in retirement is well in excess of "enough to live on".

None of this is to say that that's not in fact "the way it should be". If we are to trust the Economic Policy Institute, a union-funded think tank overseen by big-labour bigwigs, Ohio public-sector workers earn less than allegedly comparable private-sector workers. Surely it's true that government lawyers make less than their private-sector peers. But I suspect that a good deal of EPI's "controlling for education level" conclusion involves a boatload of masters degrees in education, and I'm sceptical that the "market value" of a masters in education approaches what teachers with MAs are paid. Furthermore, I suspect the value of high job security, early retirement and low income volatility ought not to be underestimated, but are by studies like EPI's.

In any case, it's not hard to see how Americans earning the median in the dicey private-sector labour market might have a hard time calling forth much sympathy for the Embrees' apparently cozy arrangement. In the end, the controversy over the bargaining privileges of public-sector unions comes down to the question of whether or not we can trust our democratic bodies to fairly compensate government workers without the intervention of powerful unions. And I think we can trust them.

However, because public-sector pay is not set by competitive markets, and because many classes of public worker provide government-monopolised services, it's hard to know what the work of many a government employee is really worth. It doesn't make sense to compare the pay of government CPAs with that of private-sector CPAs if it turns out public CPAs tend to do half the work in the same period of time. Democratic deliberation over public-sector pay would improve a great deal if we had better data on the productivity of similar public- and private-sector workers, as well as a much larger body of peer-reviewed evidence comparing public and private compensation according to the most rigorous and sophisticated standards. Any work in this direction is bound be controversial, given the high emotion around the issue of public-sector pay, but it's absolutely necessary if we're to base policy on more than feelings. We will never get beyond the educated guess, but our guesses could be better-educated.