Grandpa Cheap notes that South Dakota has once again earned a AAA credit rating from Moody’s Investor Service and Standard & Poor Global.
“This is the highest credit rating a state can obtain.” said Gov. Daugaard. “By sticking to conservative budget practices and keeping our reserves at 10 percent of our annual budget, South Dakota continues to benefit from the highest rating possible. We’ve worked hard to place our state on a firm financial footing, and that stewardship has paid dividends” [Office of the Governor, press release, 2018.11.22].
Among the dividends of that stewardship are lower taxes and lower interest rates on bonds of public projects. But low wages are still standard, and we’re all going to feel moody and poor if we don’t pay our nurses and their teachers more:
Health care officials say many factors contribute to South Dakota’s comparatively poor compensation levels for nursing, including the rural nature of the state, as well as low reimbursement rates to hospitals from Medicare, Medicaid and Indian Health Services.
Still, they are at a loss to explain why those same factors are not at play to the same extent in surrounding states.
While the average RN salary in Iowa is comparable at $57,930, Nebraska nurses receive an average of $62,210 per year. North Dakota nurses make $63,140 annually, and, in Minnesota, nurses earn $77,540 per year, the [American Nurses Association] reports [Tom Griffith, “Low Pay Complicates Efforts to Attract, Retain Nurses in South Dakota,” South Dakota News Watch 2018.11.21].
Funny: major South Dakota health care providers Sanford and Avera have money to spare to put their names on super-duper sports facilities, but they can’t find the scratch to pay their nurses competitive wages. I have a hard time giving those priorities a AAA rating.
Before he heads out the door (because heaven knows Kristi Noem won’t hire anyone smart enough to do math like this), maybe Governor Daugaard can ask chief of staff Tony Venhuizen to break down the exact value of the dividends of that AAA rating and present them in his final budget address next month, along with a proposal on how to spend that money to boost wages for nurses and everyone else in South Dakota.
Related Reading: California only has an Aa3 from Moody’s and an AA- from S&P. California nurses making the highest salary in the nation, $102,700 per year, seem unfazed.
But you hate Daugaard, can it be that the administration did a good thing?
And then you end the article comparing CA? How about evaluating the two states in all categories. And why don’t you just move there? I mean really, none of us want people like you here anyway.
Except for the fun of watching you lose elections and then subsequently show the anger and frustration bleed into your blog.
Pearson, I have been reading Cory’s blog since the Madville Times days and I can say unequivocally I have never seen a post suggesting Cory hates anyone, including Dauguard. I met and talked with Cory during the 2016 election campaign and nothing he said suggested he hates anyone. All evidence I have seen indicates your comment alleging he hates Dauguard is factually incorrect and seems to rise to the level of a meaningless childish slur for no good reason that I can see.
The truth is that Cory’s posts address issues, both national and state, and identify many that he disagrees with or supports. He might even hate some particularly abhorrent polcies, which seems a reasonable reaction to particular public policies.
For example, I literally “hate” our current national policy of tear gassing men, women and children and seperating kids from parents, all to discourage them from seeking safety in our country. I also “hate” the current national policy of “committing horrific crimes against the poorest and most desperate people for the sake of defending borders.” Pehaps others love, support, or at least turn a blind eye to such policies, but it seems we all, including Cory, have a 1st Amendment right, which deserves respect, to express our views about those and other public policies and to support or oppose any public official’s actions and statements relating to public policy.
As for the “us” you refer to in your comment, that certainly does not include me and I seriously doubt whether it includes any other person who comments here other than you. But if you (a/k/a “us”) feel so strongly about Cory it makes one wonder why you would even visit this blog. What’s up with that? Perhaps you are not even telling the truth about yourself (a/k/a “us.”)
One of the beauties of living in this country is that another is that another American does not have the right to demand someone move elsewhere, it is pettiest and most un-American comment someone can make.
From the end of July up until a week ago I was hospitalized multiple times including a long stay in a rehab center where I had to learn to walk again.
This whole time I marveled at the dedication and hard work the nurses and nurse aides put in. Many would rotate so they could work a second facility just to make enough money to survive.
I was disgusted to learn that my caregivers pay is 51st in the country.
Please excuse me for getting personal about my health, but it was the only way I could express my disgust.
I am so glad to have you back Roger. Your comments consistently reflect wisdom, compassion, empathy, and provide food for thought. You are greatly appreciated by many on this forum. Keep getting better!!
Steve Pearson
Why do you HATE Cory so much that you intentionally misspell his name and want him to leave the state where he was born?
Thank you bear, it is good to be home again, both at my residence and at Dakota Free Press.
The days in months I was so sick I managed most days to read Cory’s blog even when I couldn’t read much of anything. Cory and company never cease to impress with his blog and the mostly great commentary.
Thanks again, bear.
Anybody talk to any avera or sanford nurses lately? Just so you know, RNs with a two-year degree start above $25 per hour. I think our healthcare workers do great things and we want them happy and well-paid, but really…that’s decent money for the investment…
The market determines wages, not Government.
Yep. Here in South Dakota we have low taxes ,,, but we don’t grt much for ’em.
Two year RN programs and 4 year RN programs take the exact same boards. You don’t pass, you don’t work. The 4 year programs include more business/management studies whereas the 2 year programs’ focus is primarily medical, technical and direct patient care. You need a strong back, not take offense when one swears at you and don’t leave your sense of humor at home. And also, not to be afraid to show compassion or heartbreak. I don’t see $25/hr as an obscene wage for the work whether you spent 2 years in the classroom or 4. And remember, there are months of non-paid clinicals (on the job training with supervision).
Oh Jenny? We could use your expertise here too.
I think it would be nearly impossible to overpay a nurse. Pay attention to what they do!! Good grief! They’re incredibly smart, wise, compassionate and do the physical work of a day laborer. (I know. There are a few exceptions, but nursing is not a field that tends to draw people who like power over others or want to have it easy.)
There are many professions that warrant better pay..I would put teachers at the top. Nurses, would be 2nd. I’m biased regarding both. My parents and brother both teach. I’m a nurse. It’s hard and I certainly can’t determine someone’s worth pay-wise, but based on the emotion, compassion and the physical and mental toll that both professions take, coupled with the educational debt, I think. Rises and teachers should be paid more.
Ryan, where did you get your salary stats?
I am closely related to several nurses and also have friends who are nurses. Don’t get me wrong, I think most nurses have very difficult jobs and most are worth every cent they are paid. I don’t think $25 an hour is obscene, but I do believe those hours of unpaid work are part of the for-credit education, so that doesn’t seem like such a downside.
I was merely suggesting that a starting salary of $50k or $55k in a first job with a 2 year degree at age 20 or 21 doesn’t exactly sound like poverty to me, especially when the median HOUSEHOLD income in south dakota is less than $55K.
Thanks Debbo! And also thanks to RJ. I agree teachers are underpaid. Without a doubt SD is at the bottom of so many lists. But, hey, we sure balance that budget year in and year out … but there are consequences for that strident budget balancing and that is the bottom of the states’ lists for teacher pay, college expense and debt, wages, quality child care, etc. It is tiring and embarrassing to always be at the bottom of the lists.
AAA ratings don’t raise wages; Democrats do.
The market does determine nursing wages, which is why I am uneasy about a straight-up government subsidy for private-sector workers as Al Novstrup offered with his plan to create a new state property tax just to subsidize pay for Aspire and other private community service providers.
But I would suggest that the cheapskate ethos South Dakota uses to recruit employers manifests itself in a tendency toward attracting cheapskate employers who don’t reward their employees fully for the work they do and the wealth they create.
Ryan, I understand the argument that nursing wages look good compared to other SD wages. But as with teacher pay, we have to look at the market in that field, not the overall wage situation. Nurses aren’t choosing between making $25 an hour nursing in SF or $12 an hour stocking shelves or flipping burgers. They are choosing between $25 an hour here or $35-$40 an hour in Minnesota or $49/hour in California.
Cory, I agree with the idea of competition, but those decisions are universal for each person in each area of life, not just career selection or location.
I purchased my home for less than 200K but if I moved to certain parts of California, my little ranch would probably go for nearly $1M. I don’t think it makes sense to try expect or try to create consistency in wages while enjoying the benefits of other factors that are apparently “good” enough for people to remain here.
First, I do understand we are talking private entities, not governmental, but this does seem to call to question spending priorities. Do SD hospitals charge rates for care that are proportionately lower for patients here compared to MN? Where is that income being spent — if not on wages? After near monopolizing health care in the region, why not work to keep those on the front line of providing that care well paid? Talking money from patient’s pockets, nurse’s pockets . . . to build another monument to ostentatious “charity” has never sat well with me.
It sounds like a lot of people on here want to design, fund, create, build, and run hospitals. Either that, or they want to tell other people how to run their businesses without doing one ounce of the work necessary to do it themselves. But hey, what would america be without idle complainers?
Query to those who know more than I do – Had SD accepted federal medicaid expansion dollars over the last several years it was available would this have provided needed funds for increasing nurses’ pay in SD?
BCB: good question. I would suspect not directly: the Medicaid dollars go straight to paying for care, not paying higher salaries to those providing care.
But Medicaid expansion would make sure less care goes uncompensated, meaning the hospitals would operate on healthier margins, which theoretically would allow them to pay staff more. Of course, they might pay doctors more, or CEOs more, rather than nurses. Or they might plunge those savings into research, or give them back to other customers by charging less.
Medicaid expansion allowed Montana to add 6,200 health care jobs. More demand for labor should raise wages, right?
I don’t consider it an “idle complaint” for any one of us who might, thanks to some idiot driver or free radical, end up a customer of our local health care providers to say that we’d like our health care providers to offer nurses competitive wages so that we can recruit top nursing talent to treat what ails us.
I also don’t consider it an idle complaint to suggest that hospitals spend less on sports facilities where attendees sit on their duffs watching a few elite athletes engage in physical activity and invest that money instead in employees.
“good enough” for some people doesn’t access the full range of talent in the marketplace. Instead of making excuses and settling for only half of the pool, why don’t we expect better wages here?
That honestly just sounds like “gimme gimme gimme.”
So these two big hospitals exist. They employ thousands of south dakotans. They are incredibly active in local communities. They fund countless public service campaigns. They foster health education and healthy living through numerous wellness programs. They bring out of state dollars to our doorstep when patients travel for treatment. They provide their employees standard and fringe benefits that may seem small but add up with so many employees.
I’m not a business owner but it seems like if these hospitals just paid all the revenue out in salaries they wouldn’t be able to grow the brand, impact a wider audience, heal more sick people, or innovate.
Suggesting they should raise wages instead of building arenas is an unnecessary comment. It isn’t an either / or issue. They could afford to do both…but they just don’t need to. The dollars don’t lie – if you work 40 hours a week and earn a salary comparable to that of an average entire family, I’ll save my sympathy for somebody else.
Sure it sounds like “gimme gimme gimme.” Workers have to say that. Workers have to advocate for themselves, because no one else will. South Dakota workers need to say, “Gimme what I can make elsewhere, or I’m going to do the economically rational thing for my family and walk.”
I give not one rip about a hospital’s brand. All the arenas in the world won’t outweigh my going to the hospital for a physical or an owie and having a crappy nurse who treated me or my family poorly.
I agree that marketing vs competitive wages shouldn’t be either/or. Our hospitals are rich enough to do both. Why don’t they? Why do we keep counting on just enough people to sacrifice optimal economic conditions for other mostly non-work factors that an employer doesn’t create and thus doesn’t really deserve to profit from? Why do we keep accepting the loss of rational top talent and the expansion of a culture that makes workers feel ashamed for asking for their just deserts?
If people were running from these great paying jobs toward even greener pastures at the rate you pretend they are, the demand for employees would correct the salaries to levels necessary for the system to run. You are asking for people to put everything on the line to build massive empires while nobody else risks much, and then for those risk-takers and empire builders to give away everything to everyone else. I’m just suggesting empire builders wouldn’t build empires if that was how they thought. You are asking for a perfect world. I don’t think that’s realistic.
Ryan, the issue is that a labor shortage does exist. That shortage is being disguised up by public assistance (especially in training); we try to entice more students to go to vocational schools to get more nurses in the pool for health care. That outsources the costs of training to state government (who fund technical institutes) and to individuals (tuition – at regionally high rates). All in an effort to get the job pool large enough to allow the continuation of the suppressed wages (and greater profit). I really take your point about heading for greener pastures to heart, but all too much, that message is being diluted by a system that creates a ready labor pool at outsourced cost.
o, those may very well be valid concerns, but you are painting with much broader strokes than just saying nurses are underpaid. You are talking about the entire education-to-employment system being broken and the need to re-direct the costs of necessary training back to the employer rather than expecting prospective employees to self-train on their own dime (or the state’s dime). That may be true, but that is different than suggesting a certain pool of employees should be paid better.
Jason: “The market determines wages, not Government.” That is where we disagree. In my discussion with Ryan (above) I see the government’s use of public funds to propagate a pool of trained employees, as an intrusion into the market that undermines wages by relieving the employer of having the responsibility to set a wage that attracts skilled workers to jobs, and unskilled potential workers into training. Ryan, my argument is that better pay (and in-house training) would relieve the financial public funding burden of creating a pool of skilled employees. To me, a discussion of job shortages is a discussion of salary; those two issues are hand-in-hand.
I so often look at the example of the ND oilfields; those are brutal, hard jobs — but people move to those jobs because those jobs paid well.
O and I pretend no rate. We make a point about the labor market. South Dakota is having trouble recruiting nurses. It would have less trouble if we paid nurses wages that other regions of the free market say nurses are worth.