Rick Scott, USA Today and public sector wages

The Miami Herald reports that Gov. Rick Scott once again praised the thrifty ways of America’s largest retailer, Walmart, on Monday:

Scott said he saw a study last week (we’re checking to see where it came from) that showed the average government worker earns $9,000 more than the average private sector employee.

“It doesn’t mean the study is right. There are so many studies that come out,” Scott said. “But if you just think about it on the private side, if you’re a taxpayer, almost no taxpayer has a pension plan anymore. Very few, because the private companies couldn’t compete.

“Ninety-five percent of all Americans shop at Wal-mart at least once a year. When those Americans go shop there, they don’t say, ‘Gosh, I’m going to pay for that product because they have the best pension plan, or the best health care insurance or the nicest boss. They go based on price.

“As taxpayers and as consumers, we go to price.”

The study came from USA Today. Among other things, it didn’t control for employees’ education or other factors that affect people’s wages.

One liberal economist quoted by the paper, who has done studies that do control for those factors (and found public sector workers are actually paid less), said USA Today‘s results were misleading.

Still, Scott said, wages in the private sector have been decreasing, and almost nobody in the private sector has a defined-benefit retirement plan anymore.