What's that adage you get what you pay for? How will the city be able to operate efficiently if it pays people this way?

http://www.toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

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In Detroit, a news report related last week, wage cuts have dropped the entry-level clerical worker pay to $17,000 a year. Back in 1970, city clerks started at $7,000, a sum that translates, after inflation adjusting, to over $39,000 today.
Detroit city workers, in effect, have had their real incomes cut in half. And Detroit’s mayor, on top of this cut, now wants these workers to pick up another 20 percent of what their health care premiums are costing the city...."