Were lots of DC-area professionals overpaid?
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Anonymous
It was my impression when I conducted evaluations for USAID that the agency's way of working was highly niche. People would need to become experts in USAID, not simply development, because that seemed secondary in many ways. I don't think USAID staff or contractors/consultants are more competent or more intelligent compared to say, those who worked in diplomacy or cooperation, though I do believe many considered themselves more evolved. I think the work mattered, but it was undermined by the US-based implementers, the politics, and the misplaced prestige of offering social services and packaging it as foreign assistance. |
Anonymous
Well, yes. That is economically true. You may think those jobs are overvalued. That's fine, values are subjective. But the people paying get to decide what they're willing to pay for. And any individual being paid the typical rate for a person of similar education and experience is by definition not overpaid, even if you personally think the market rate is not a good value. |
Anonymous
Yet we constantly hear on DCUM that PE bros and CEOs are overpaid and teachers and social workers are underpaid. |
Anonymous
| Surely she could find something else even for $100K a year. That looks like a fluff article for attention. These non-profits are a scam. |
Anonymous
You just diplomatically called that poster a self-important clown. |
Anonymous
Amen |
Anonymous
+1. Paying the president $675k for overseeing a $70 million budget is insane. |
Anonymous
What size budget deserves that salary? |
Anonymous
Because they’re not being paid according to the people. Most taxpayers want teachers and social workers to be paid more (with our taxes) but instead that money goes to fund corporate bailouts, Casino of the US wars, and tax breaks for the wealthy. |
Anonymous
“That poster” didn’t work for USAID and the people hating on them aren’t diplomats - they’re more likely to be used car salesmen or Walmart cashiers. If you were a bit smarter maybe you would have been able to follow along without the handholding, dear. |
Anonymous
Every single job, outside of weird edge cases like coercion or slavery, has a willing payor and a willing payee, so this is a nothing statement. Following your line of thinking, for the vast majority of jobs, no is underpaid or overpaid, since it is all done by choice. People are clearly not talking about some efficiency market theorem when they make such statements; and they make them all the time. You are the kind of literalist that spews inane "insights" like this thinking they've made a point. Do you also "well, actually" when people call athletes and entertainers overpaid as well? |
Anonymous
LOL, "diplomats". Another crutch these self-important losers use to prop themselves up as they prey on local women at the bars they could never get in the States. |
Anonymous
The issue here is that private market salaries are set in an environment where there are countless different employers offering salaries independently and in pursuit of their own self interest. If a big chunk of the non-profit industry is all being funded by the US government, there isn’t actually a functioning free market. It is also clear that USAID wasn’t doing proper due diligence if it was awarding grants to “non profits” that were making their leadership rich while supposedly administering charity. How could anyone pay the salaries shown in the documents posted earlier while claiming they are doing some humanitarian mission? There are only 100 people in the company… how can you need 7 people at an average annual compensation of over $400k/year to run a 100 person nonprofit with a small budget? At a minimum there should be rules put in place that any nonprofit receiving a grant from the US government pay no more than is allowed by the government pay scale. This nonprofit was paying its CEO two thirds of a million dollars a year to run a 100 person entity with a $70million budget… meanwhile actual USAID senior leadership weren’t making much more than a third of that to run vastly larger entities. |
Anonymous
The government makes funds available, on a competitive basis, to companies doing work the government wants done. If the government is hiring directly that's a contract and otherwise it's a grant (loosely speaking). The government's focus should be, and is, on the work that is going to be done. How the company structures itself and how it pays its staff (including from other sources of income, which most nonprofits have) are not the government's business, outside of some ethical guards that benefit the government. If they tried what you're suggesting with defense contractors you'd scream. The people who work at nonprofits don't take a vow of poverty and there's no reason they should. |
Anonymous
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When I worked overseas for a long time, I did have some exposure to the world of international donor aid and it wasn't entirely flattering. A seasoned veteran who'd done a lot of contracting work with NGOs funded by USAID explicitly said to me that it's billions sloshing around and nothing ever really changes on the ground. And this was 10 years ago.
You can see from the examples given here that most money went to salary and overhead, not direct grants. But even on the ground, those grants go to local contractors and consultants, which is another level of cronyism often involving local politics and connected families. The economic research projects never go anywhere. Water pipes to a village may eventually get built, and then rebuilt, and then rebuilt, often by the same contractor. It's hard to have sympathy for something that may have been well meaning but ended up being more self justifying and staffed by people who kept themselves busy with many meetings and talking the idealistic talk but actual output is more vanity for these same people than anything they delivered. |