[Superman]

Thanks Paul. I appreciate your posts too. And as long as we're benefitting from each others' views, here are a few factoids on wage laws, particularly prevailing wage laws. They are modeled after the federal Davis-Bacon Act. Davis and Bacon were conservative Southern congressmen. Their Act was proposed to stop folks from eating their lunches. It seems that when large highway contracts came up for bid, out-of-state contractors would underbid their local contractors, and then import cheap labor from other, more depressed, labor markets. Those workers would drain local public assistance and goodwill stores, then take their earnings out of the state. Without a prevailing wage law, California would be an economic "sitting duck."

$79k in earnings would be nice, but that's not the reality. The construction season is perhaps eight months long, not twelve. The construction career (unless you move into management) is perhaps 20 years, certainly not 40. The work is skilled, not unskilled (sure' flagging is fairly easy, but I'd guess that a certification course is required and it is one of the most dangerous of all construction occupations). Finally, while Californica is pretty nice, there are days when I promise you would not trade your job for that of a Seattle Iron Worker erecting red iron on top of an eighty foot structure in freezing rain with a howling wind.

Prevailing wage laws simply mandate that local wage standards be respected on public works. They do not "make up" the wages, they are the local workers' wages. And contractors need this protection, otherwise you'd see nothing but brown faces in those jobs, your unemployment rates would be breathtaking, apprenticeship and other training programs would be a faint memory and you'd get what you pay for.