Grrl Power #345 – KA-POW + KA-BLAM = KA-CHING!
That’s recruit pay Sydney. Wait till you make Corporal.
Most stories are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, but at this point you guys know I prefer writing about extraordinary people in ordinary situations. I don’t think making Sydney well off will hamper my story telling at all. Besides, as has been said many times in the comments (and I think at least few in the comic itself) that having super powers usually means you can make a seriously good living totally within the law. Why rob a bank when you can make more money by telekinetically unloading freighters in 20 minutes each, or lay transcontinental cable in a fraction of the normal time with your water breathing and super strength combo? That makes getting someone to potentially get shot at with bullets, lasers and lightning is a tougher sell unless you make it worth their while. Of course there are thrill seekers who want the adrenaline of either breaking the law or stopping that type, or they’re sold on nationalism or responsibility or whatever ideology motivates them, still, a healthy paycheck helps keep them around and provides stability to the team composition.
It was challenging to write so many pages of the comic without the topic of pay coming up. I don’t think I’ll say what the exact dollar amount is, but it’s something in the order of “you can have one jet, or ten supers per year” Admittedly that’s a huge range depending on what jet you’re talking about (and whether you include the R&D costs, maintenance staff and infrastructure, etc.) One Heatwave is not worth one jet in terms of crime fighting power, (not that people do a lot of crime fighting in jets, but you get what I mean) Ten Heatwaves… arguably worth one jet, or at least ten Heatwave level supers. One Maxima is worth an entire battle group, so mileage varies, but at least supers don’t require nearly the same support staff. Their insurance is rather a bit higher though.
The prior page ended kind of vaguely, which wasn’t ideal, but that’s because I wanted to save Sydney’s entire reaction for this page. I realize now that I’ve drawn it, her reaction is actually quite similar to Fry’s, if somewhat more terse. (She doesn’t faint, but we’ll get to that.) I thought it was more heavily inspired by Ren and Stimpy where Stimpy gives up $47 million to be back living with Ren, but looking it up on youtube, Ren’s reaction is just to get angry and smack Stimpy around. This is one of those pages that’s been floating around in my head for so long it probably has several influences.
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If her salary is that huge, her income taxes probably cut it in half. Somewhere on that pay slip should be her before-tax income.
If she’s looking at the after-tax number and still finding it to be over 26x her previous income, it must be like winning the lottery every two weeks.
Clearly the only logical thing to do here is to ASSASSINATE the president, thus absorbing his power and becoming the new president and gaining complete control over the United States. Then you’ll never have to pay taxes again.
That’s the way it works, right? I might have slept through some of my civics class.
No, just form a religion and become exempt from taxes. Almost any super-powered being should find that to be a trivial thing to accomplish. After all, if televangelists can do it only on promises, and street magicians can fool people, think what a person with actual powers can pull off.
unless she was just handed a plain old check type of paycheck… rather than the more proper LES (Leave and Earnings Statement)with the tear-off-at-the-dotted-line-check that she signs and deposits, keeping the upper portion for tax records, that she would normally get… remember that she’s getting an ADVANCE on her NORMAL paycheck therefore this might not be the normal way of documenting it either. and if that is the case then all she sees is the final value that is going to be deposited, and nothing else.
Sandy said Sydney doesn’t have direct deposit, so that’s a check.
Who knew means Sydney has to go to…
…THE BANK!
Stupid auto correct.
“Which now means Sydney…”
So it has come to this. The circle is complete.
“Income tax” on a government pay is almost meaningless, as it is putting money from one government pocket into another. It only matters cause it allows you to benefit from tax returns.
You said nothing accurate at all.
Sounds like they’re overpaid :p Every two weeks she’s getting paid more than she made the previous year. I just don’t see them paying her over 700k a year (this is assuming she made the equivalent of 7 dollars an hour and worked normal 40 hours a week) or anyone else, powers or not.
There are 12 players in a regulation season NBA team, for 360 across the entire association. That means there are 360 people talented enough to be “on the team.”
The average salary of an NBA player is 4.9 million dollars a year.
Movie stars, professional ball whackers, and high powered CEOs and lawyers, are all capable of making salaries in excess of a million a year. It takes a long buildup, talent, and dedicated training and practice to do this. And there are plenty of people nearly as talented dedicated and trained ready and waiting to take their place if they falter. Even in the military.
None of these dedicated, talented, trained individuals can shoot plasma bolts from their fingers, survive a cruise missile to the face, or fly under their own power. In this setting superpowers are a finite resource that appear to be something you can’t artificially create (Iron man? Where’s he?). So yes. They will pay whatever they need to have these people on the team, because there is no next-in-line.
As to the expense, it probably won’t be as bad as you might think. As Arianna might say “marketing!”
No. I thought of that. The difference you’re not seeing, is Sydney is government employee. Do you really think the government is going to say “Why yes, we will pay you that much money!”?
President makes 400k a year and there’s only a couple of federal employees who’ve made more than that.
Now, if all Sydney made was 1 dollar a hour, because she owns her own business, then the whole “more than I made all year” is not impressive at all. :p
We can go with the idea that “Well, they market them as toys and such, so that pays for their salaries.” but then, do they start giving them pay cuts when their toy lines stop selling?
“Sorry Maxine, we know you’re the leader of the team because you’re the most powerful member, but people just don’t care for you anymore, because you’re considered OP, a golden skinned Superman with boobs.”
*in walks Harem* “Whoot! Pay raise! People not only think I’m more relatable, I’m not the boring unbeatable super!”
You focused on the little blurb on the end about defraying costs while skipping over the main point entirely.
These super powered individuals are not replaceable. The government cannot “produce” these people. Think of them as a finite natural resource.
If Maxima or Harem decide that the money from working in the civilian sector is too good to pass up and quit then they cannot be replaced.
So yes the government (in this case Archon) says “We will pay you that much money, because that is what our analysts have calculated to be the amount required to keep you here doing the job we need you to do rather than out on the open market.”
And an analyst would consider it a bargain when you compare one Anvil worth of pay to the equivalent amount of traditional men and material that purchasing power acquires. Per year you could cover the pay of about three squads of soldiers or the upkeep and operational costs of about two Abrams Tank’s (assuming we’re talking about somewhere in the vicinity of $700k) . Of course that doesn’t cover the cost of equipping and maintaining the equipment of those squads, as well as the other costs of transporting and supporting 30 odd soldiers instead of 1 Anvil. Nor does it cover the purchase or production price of those tanks.
Start taking costs of producing, supporting, and maintaining police/soldiers and material and you’ll quickly come to realize why getting these super powered people at only 6 figure salary is a bargain.
Already thought of that. However, the government doesn’t do that now. You have great soldiers who leave for the private sector for the better pay.
From what I’ve experienced in witness in the government and in the quite a few corporations, they do not in fact act that way. This isn’t to say there are not ones who state it, just not how it plays out.
Government is cheap and corporations prefer the money to go to the bosses and not the employees.
And those soldiers are replaceable. Superheros are not.
Superheroes aren’t soldiers. If Maxima or Anvil or Halo leave, then they cant just find someone else to replace them. Remember when all those villains showed up in the parking lot? Someone (I think Maxima) made a comment about how that was more than they actually thought were in the entire country.
If one of them leaves, they can’t just go out and recruit someone with the same powers, or even the same power level, because the government clearly has no way of tracking or identifying other supers, barring those with a visibly different appearence like MAxima or Dabbler.
Furthermore, Dabbler has knowledge of alien technology that no one else on Earth has, and for all anyone knows, there is not a single person on the planet more powerful than Maxima, and for all the government knows, those orbs of Sydney’s are the only ones in existence, and Sydney may be the only person in the world who can use them.
You said that “Great Soldiers leave all the time? but a “Great Soldier” can be reproduced by taking an average soldier and putting them through training and putting them in situations where they will gain experience and you will get a very similar soldier. THey can’t take a regular soldier and do ANYTHING to make a new Maxima, or Dabbler, or Harem, or Halo, or even Math.
That was more *Combat Capable* supers than they thought were in the country. And they were right, the majority of the restaurant supers were glass cannons with very little actual combat potential, going down in one shot with no method to be able to take a hit or not be hit in the first place. Compare to Anvil, who alone is effortlessly capable of DEMOLISHING any physical supers that try to fight her. About 5 of them were actually combat capable.
You’re assuming she made $7/hr. Since she works for herself, she could theoretically only be making $1/hr after taxes. Depends on how they set up the biz, etc. When you work for yourself, there IS no minimum wage.
She might have only made $10K the previous year, especially if her biz is doing bad and they’re reinvesting the revenue back into the biz for marketing.
Using your example though, if she made the equivalent of $7/hour @ 40 hours a week X 52 weeks = $14,560/yr. If she got $15K a paycheck, that would be $390K a year.
Since we in the USA have politicians that make over $200K a year for working less than 100 days a year, that rate isn’t that much for a highly valuable consultant/soldier. My stepson was making close to 200K straight out of high school as a diesel mechanic as a contractor over in Iraq, so having someone who can:
– fly near sonic speed
– high powered shield to protect civilians
– more firepower than a tank
– ability to lift huge amounts of weight with her lighthook
– etc
All of which can be expanded in capabilities.
Even at $400K, if this was a real world example, they’d be severely underpaying her compared to what she could get in the private sector…
government always underpays compared to the private sector. Your stepson was still in the private sector, these supers are government employees.
this is late as hell but I’m gonna say it anyway.
The government pays less because they have no profit margin. Even the pay of the top guys (presidents etc) is considerably less than the presidents of big corporations.
HOWEVER, Archon is not only an incredible asset to the government, worthy of being a branch in itself despite employing maybe a few hundred people, they’re going to be selling merchandise as well.
Let’s assume for a moment this sells as well as Marvel/DC products. That’s quite some millions.
Let’s not forget Archon is an entire branch of the military. The budget for the military in the US is considerably higher than in any other country.
Each of the super-powered members of the team can offset an entire squad of normal personnel at the least, and several of them can offset some expensive and high-grade equipment as well.
Maxima has the destructive power of a mid-sized battleship. Those cost hundreds of millions to build, and millions to man and maintain. Let’s say 5 million yearly. Let’s say because of her rank she gets paid 2 million yearly. That saves the government 3 million just for firepower, not even counting the many utilities.
Halo, when she’s fully trained, will be an even bigger asset utility-wise, even though she probably won’t be able to produce more firepower than a strong artillery unit anytime soon.
yeah, I think I can stop here.
The key word being “contractor”. Contractors get paid whatever the government is willing to pay them. An E-3 could earn a fair bit in bonuses and allowances, especially for right out of high school, but there is some maxium somewhere and I’m sure even if they were earning that they’d still balk at having to pay $40 for lunch every day. In certain enlisted fields, retention is bad because after the military training and some college classes many private sector companies are willing to pay much more than the military can. I’ve even heard of civilian government employees getting poached by the private sector offering salary more than twice the maximum amount the government is allowed to pay civilian employees.
Also, I’m pretty sure the government couldn’t have jobs that only people born with super-powers would be allowed to hold, because that’s discrimination, so you couldn’t have pay that only supers could have…
Non-supers are able to hold those jobs. Sidney herself is an example! Math, too. You just have to be able to work at super power-levels. The US Government is allowed to only hire people who can do the job.
Besides which, non-supers aren’t a protected class, discrimination against them isn’t illegal, and the military has broad leeway on that anyway.
Don’t forget that Sydney runs a dying business.
“More than a year” of money is lot less for her than for somebody with a stable salary.
They’re artillery level powerfull, so paying them like the upkeep of a piece of artillery seems more than reasonable.
Comparison according to https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/05/B-21-stealth-bomber-stealthy-price-tag/148372/ costed 1 B-2 2 billion dollars just to build.
Sydney costs according to your calculation 700k a year.
20*10^9/(7*10^5) is around 28.571.
so from one B-2 devolopment and building costs they could afford a super with the power to cut thanks, take at least anti-tank level hits without any damage, fly, lift around 17 tons, go mach 3, with included managment and upkeep costs for 28.571 years. That seems like a sweet deal to me.
so…what your saying, is to be rich, you need to become a super hero…well i already have the name for it, maybe change it depending on my powers, its about a fifty fifty chance and im feeling lucky! TO THE RADIOACTIVE NUCLEAR WASTE!
That’s how I did it.
Sounds good. Will chemical waste do? I could roll around in the old pipettes and liquids from the chem lab at uni…
I think biochemical waste would be most effective, since that often containes gene modding chemicals and or virusses/bacteria.
Come on Sydney, I mastered that in 15 minutes, and that was my first time even seeing a handgun. Just keep a firm grip on the slide.
Trust me, you don’t want to know how many times a newb did something along these lines in Basic Training.
I managed it without incident as I had worked armed security for six months before enlisting.
I think I am just a natural with firearms, qualified with the Beretta second time I ever touched a handgun, and I have nickel sized rifle groups
She has the same look in the last panel as I did when I got my first paycheck as a casino dealer after working as a bouncer for far too many years. It was so weird having a comma in my weekly paychecks ( after taxes ) .
Like I said below this, it was the same. The comma comment was right on!
This is how I felt after coming home from a long deployment in Afghanistan!
Then again, my earnings were also tax-free at the time, in addition to hazard pay, combat pay and the like.
I also garnered huge reenlistment bonuses as I happened to have spoken both Arabic & Pashtu (stolen from me by a serious traumatic brain injury & ensuing ruptured brain aneurysm), two languages that the DoD was badly needing after 9/11.
Most super rich only pay taxes if they want to. Once you become a Plutocrat you are part of the elite in the pay area.
I don’t that a. having a salry instead of profit and b. having the government as your boss is going to help with that.
I really hope to see this turn into a series of additional jokes and gags about Syd’s low impulse control.
If you give most people with ADHD more money what generally happens is that they end up with a lot more stuff and still no money. Syd might buy up all the comic book shops she hates, and then run them into the ground just as badly if not worse than their prior owners; have to go groveling back to her former boss to take over an enterprise that’s somehow ended up bankrupting her despite her higher pay.
Or buying a jet, or a supervillian’s abandoned volcano lair. I could totally see Syd getting scammed on the purchase of a volcano lair.
reading through a lot of these comments, I think a lot of people (not having read all comments I will not assume all people) aren’t taking into account her actual business. Owning your own business is great and all, but one thing you have to consider is you are no longer making “7$ an hour” You are instead making what isn’t put into expenses and put to the side for expansions, and what isn’t put to the side for emergency, which isn’t an hourly concept but more of a quarterly concept. sure you could do the math to figure the hourly income, but odds are if your not employed by another company, not in a high sales business (comics, while a fairly decent income industry, has never made the actual store owners very rich…they do better as a “oh we happen to also sale comics” rather than an actual comic store.), your income is going to look very pitiful hourly before car and house payments, before loan payments, before whatever you owe outside of taxes.
And then we also have to consider, how often does Sidney actually work? :P
Make it on time?
Get sued? As cute as her antics can be, people being people, not everyone accepts the same things, I mean I would be that guy “Oh you, Sydney, you are such a goof”
hand gesture and all sitcom style and everything lol
but the big question? how often does she:
destroy store property?
:P
All these talks about appropriate pay for people with superpowers kinda got me thinking… Must be tough for a non-super to find a manual job in a super-infested world.
Infested sure but there’s maybe 100 in all of the US in this world.
300, they are roughly 1 in a million
Well, I guess being a VERY well paid superhero tends to prevent them from being a sorta well paid supervillian!
If this happened to me I think I would literally cry.
I know that feeling… Two anthems playing at the same time in the back of your skull.
♫”Crawling in my skin! These wounds they will not heaaaall!”♫
♪♪♪♪ “I get knocked down! But I get up again! Cause you’re never gonna keep me down!”♪♪♪♪
But in my case… if it had been me… I think the power spheres would have clattered to the floor. Like a bag of opened marbles. “You never know where they’ll end up!”
Speaking of ending up… this seems to be the end of this post!
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Stiffness_Manipulation
Well I’ll be Dabblers friend… or Harems. Construction is a career path, probably nanotech for the Bucky tubes.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Necessity_Manipulation
Dabbled likes this one too…. hmm a theme of super gigolo? Again useful in construction, manufacture at the high end. The first power seems a subset of this one. Besides Ananke is incredibly dangerous and powerful. A career in Arc Sparq becons…
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Conceptual_Earth_Manipulation
Another creation feat. Very useful and powerful. A sideline in farming to go with the construction. This is a very powerful combination suite. Definitely Sparq for me. Not a combat character as such but certainly combat capable (though it’s a waste of his abilities), definitely in the quartemaster line. Since I actually know a bit about soil properties, this one is probably the most exploitable by me.
It’s not stated that the jet in question has to a military jet or even a US one. I think the suggestion of a lear jet seems reasonable for keeping costs down. I think someone suggested around $385m for the cost of one of these which works out to just over $16,000 for a twice monthly pay packet. This seems reasonable for a struggling business to cream off. So, as a reasonable low end estimate she’s pulling in just shy of $400,000 net a year or more. This seems about in the right ball park to me, considering she’s a super untrained recruit. Next, let’s work it from the other end, what goes into that pay packet.
So, looking things up online it’s not too difficult to get to a $200k starting pay for a new E1 if you add plenty of bonuses and multipliers. It’s not too much harder to get to $300k. It gets tricky to get to the $385k or $400k thst seems required but here’s how I did it. Oh for some reason the site I found discussed monthly pay so this will need halving for the paycheck (At just over $16k, it seems right for a failing business):
Basic E1 <2years: $1,638.24
Aviation pay $125.00
Diving duty pay $340.00 a bit weird for this point in the story but ok I guess
Hardship duty pay $300.00 this is the max military rate, half location and half mission based
High deployment allowance $1,000.00 non taxable
Hostile fire/imminent danger $225.00 non taxable
Overseas extension pay $80.00 again a bit weird as they're normally domestic
Judge advocate pay $5,000.00 cop bonus
Technical skills $525.00 I added this one but it seems reasonable, the site I found didn't list it for US pay
Career sea pay $50.00 I think this makes a screwy kind of sens
Special forces pay $380.00 not listed but I think this is in the right ball park
Assignment incentive pay $3,000.00 this is the military cap and is non taxable
Special pay: supers $6,000.00 I based this off medical specialties pay and gave it for the rating of each super, so ultra, paragon or whatever. I'm convinced this is in the right area. Besides, it's thematic.
On call pay $7,623.30 At 40%, this is high for public sector (low for private sector), but I added it as the biggest multiplie
Signing bonus $5,770.22 this is the monthly rate and is only payable for the first year (or reenlisting) and would need paying back if you don't complete basic. I've made it high at 18%, which might be unrealistic.
Total all this up and for a first year E1 you get $384,681.12 annually, some of it untaxed. Not counting allowances for things like food and board.
$32,056.76 A month or $16,028.38 per paycheck.
I also includedan accounting error (because US tax system) by the signing bonus calculating against itself in the figures resulting in an overpayment per month of $1,038.64. This should add up (with compound interest) come he end of the year if Sydney spends much of this loot, even if she commits it wisely by say expanding the comic book store massively….
Quick ways to up your pay significantly include years served, going up in the supers powers ranking and getting promoted. After basic I can see the recruits having to complete specialist training (individualised to their powers) then special forces training. Which should be a breeze for most supers, but not Sydney. After all that, they get rates as corporal specialists (with commensurate pay increments). Lots can be derived from this.
Did they intentionally give her a difficult pistol? Might have been the smart move.