How accurate is this article?

[Biggs]

I know of no $0.00 - $50,000/yr. income earners who hire live musicians (unless, perhaps, they borrowed some dough at the bank for a fancier-than-they-can-actually-afford wedding for their daughter).

Then you need cooler friends. I've done exactly this (more than once, though not enough to qualify as 'a lot') and don't even have a daughter.

I understand what you're getting at, though, and would only ask this: assuming paid live music exists at the whim of the rich, how do you account for the existence of work in bars? A gig in a bar isn't a private function in the way, say, a black tie fundraiser is, and judging from the condition of the poopholes I've played in and bar patrons I've played for, no one too 'rich' was involved. I defer to your significantly more extensive gigging experience, though I would assert that, even in my ~70,000-person town in flyover country, multiple local acts are playing on any given night.

[Lew]

- Virtually no one paid 91%. There were uber deductions.
- You're not going to convince me that 9.25% sales tax in my state (vs. 1% during that era) is lower...and that $5500 property tax on a house now worth $170,000 is less property tax than (back-adjusted for inflation) $200 on a house that (when it was built during that time) sold for $30,000.
- You're not going to convince me that $12 for a license plate (back then) was more money (back-adjusted for inflation) than $106 is now.
- You're not going to convince me that $256 for full-time in-state tuition for a semester at Memphis State University (back then...even as late as the 1970's) was more money than (back-adjusted for inflation) $3528 at the University of Memphis is now (with grade inflation - i.e. the national dumbing-down trend - being yet another "what are you getting for your tuition" factor).
- food...fuel...roughly the same cost as ever (adjusted for inflation)...but those are consumer items, and not "levels of taxation".

Yes things cost more today, but your comment made me want to verify what the tax tables seem to show. I went back and took a look at my tax returns from 1979 through last year. There is NO question that I paid a much higher percentage of my gross income in federal and State taxes combined in the late 70s, early 80s than I do today. That in spite of the fact that I make much more than I did nearly 40 years ago. If I look at the absolute differences, and what I would be paying if I were still paying at the same rate, there is NO doubt that even adding up any additional sales tax, gas tax, property tax, and other governmental fees, I pay a much smaller percentage of my income in total taxes today than I did in 1980. Of course, property taxes vary widely by state, so in some areas the increase there may more than offset any income tax savings. The point is that it isn't as simple as saying everybody pays more in taxes.

Of course, you can't say the same thing for the cost of college. It HAS increased at multiples of the CPI over that period. Of course it costs much more today even in real dollar terms to go to college than it did even 20 years ago. That is not taxes though. The real source of much of the increase in tuition at state schools has been conscious decisions by state legislatures to reduce the priority of funding for state colleges and universities. That and the bloated number of administrators being added to colleges and universities at the expense of instructional staff. Faculty salaries have NOT kept pace with inflation on average over that time period, so the costs are related to other factors.

That said, I still say that one should go to college for something for which someone has passion, not just because they think a particular field will help them get a job. If you are taking classes because you think it is a subject that will help you be employed, you will probably not do well and potential employers will also be able to tell that you aren't committed to the field in which you want to work.

[ghmerrill]

Faculty salaries have NOT kept pace with inflation on average over that time period, so the costs are related to other factors.

I am skeptical of claims like this.

My basis for the skepticism is that I KNOW what I was making as tenured faculty (in a private university) in the late 70s and early 80s (at which time I left academia). And I KNOW what salaries I was being offered in 1982 when I chose to leave academia (and in fact, a similar job opportunity as a text book editor I was offered in the mid-70s). And I KNOW what people are making today at the different faculty academic levels (in both private and public institutions), and I KNOW what people with similar experience and history are making at jobs in industry and business. In part, I know this because I remain in touch with people in both academia and industry and in part I know it because of having been involved in hiring in industry in the 90s and 2000s.

What I have seen is that the gap between academic positions (which remember are fundamentally 9-month positions) and industry positions has narrowed considerably from when I was investigating moving out of industry and into academia in the mid-70s to early 80s. What academic positions still lack is a set of benefits independent of salaries that are available in some industry positions. But from my perspective, the salary gaps (particularly at the associate professor and full professor levels) have narrowed considerably -- and often (particularly at the higher levels) the full benefits packages are very competitive. And keep in mind that for associate professors and above, these are virtually "guaranteed" jobs with no possibility of dismissal no matter what one's "performance" is.

I haven't looked at whatever statistics may be used to support the "kept pace with inflation" claim, and I haven't looked at how reliable those statistics may be, but for a number of years now I've been quite impressed at how well academic faculty are doing compared to how well I and my colleagues were doing in the mid-70s to early 80s.

Just my own perspective based on my experience.

[ghmerrill]

They also don't address the statistical methodology of any particular study. For example, what counts as a "faculty salary"? This involves two sub-questions: What counts as faculty? and What counts as a salary?

You will, for example, get very different results if you confine your reference class to (a) Full-time tenured faculty, including those with endowed chairs, (b) Full-time faculty, but eliminating those with endowed chairs, (c) Full-time faculty, both tenured and non-tenured, (d) All faculty at the level of Assistant Professor and above, (c) Faculty including part-time and adjunct faculty, or (e) Faculty including part-time and adjunct faculty and graduate students who are teaching a course or two. Not to mention whether "faculty" at online "universities" such as Strayer, Phoenix, etc. are being considered. Or whether community college faculty (at least many of whom are part-time) are being considered.

I don't know what the differences are here, and I don't know what studies (based on what reference classes and other assumptions) purport to demonstrate the claim about faculty salaries relative to inflation, but I remain skeptical.

In the late 70s and early 80s my wife and I both had Ph.D.s, both had full-time positions as faculty in major universities (mine was a tenured position at Loyola, hers was a tenure-track position in the Medical School at the University of Illinois/Chicago). Together we were bringing in less than $40,000 in salaries and supporting three small (but hungry) children. This included teaching summer school (which I tried to do as much as possible) and a two-summer NSF research grant I had in 1980-1982. By the end of the month we frequently had to take cash advances on our credit cards just to buy groceries. When I started to look seriously at jobs in industry, I was getting offers up to about 40% more than I was making. I ended up taking one that left me with about a 30% increase. My very strong impression (based on my knowledge of relative salaries) is that such a large discrepancy doesn't exist today -- at least for what people would normally regard as "genuine faculty" (full-time tenure or tenure-track positions in genuine brick and mortar universities and colleges).

I think that anyone should be highly skeptical about any general claims about "faculty salaries" since there are so many factors (and so many confounding factors) involved. As with any statistical claim and its support, the devil is in the details, and the devil is in the reference class, and the devil is in the methodology, and significant effort is often needed to understand these and to draw any reliable conclusions. Luckily, from a personal perspective you don't need to worry about this. You're in the job market and you know what you're being offered and what jobs are available to you. You take your best shot.