Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
But not nearly as often as bad employees. What that means is that the risk vs reward ratio is different for the highly skilled and diligent compared to the opposite. In other words the superior worker, on average would not accept as big a pay cut for security as the inferior worker because he is less likely to be fired if he took the securityless higher paying job and more likely to be hired elsewhere if he is fired. Thus offering less money in return for security is likely to result in a workforce where the best are underrepresented.
This supposes the superior worker has genuine alternatives which is often not the case, particularly outside of rich, advanced countries like the US (in many countries there is only one business of type X). However, the bolded describes quite well the situation in the public sector in Spain. Job security, once attained, is absolute, although salaries are low, and getting lower (in real terms) year by year. Except in limited contexts, such as academic research, where there are no alternative employers, the highly skilled, competent, and ambitious leave the public sector (even leave Spain ...). For example, this has been a problem in the medical sector.
Of course this dynamic is well understood by the rightwing political forces that take advantage of it to degrade public institutions. The US has relatively robust public institutions that function better than those elsewhere precisely because it pays better and offers somewhat less absolute job security.