5 ms·

How do people justify earning more than others?

32 points by edward 11y ago

estefan 11y ago
> Finn Brennan, who drove London Underground trains for 23 years and now works for union Aslef, says drivers deserve their £49,673 annual pay because they do a "difficult and skilled job". > He says they start work as early as 04:45 and finish as late as 01:30, working eight-hour shifts in a "small metal box underground" - conditions he says would be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" in other circumstances. And yet whenever LU try to automate them they go on strike. Guess it can't be that bad after all. I wonder if he can say "hypocrite"...
- mbrutsch 11y ago
  Employment == life in our society. They strike when you try to take it away.
- entee 11y ago
  I don't think it's hypocritical to say a job is difficult and also to say that you want to keep that job. Automation may or may not be a good idea, but I think it's important to be compassionate about those who we lose their livelihood as a result. We as a society don't have a compelling idea for how to help those people yet.
- harperlee 11y ago
  Eh, it's not inconsistent to have a very bad job, and that such a bad job is better than no job - the same way that one is not a hypocrite for not quitting from a bad job. People generally need money to have shelter, food, healthcare, education, etc. for themselves and their family. Do you think these merit sacrifice?
  - estefan 11y ago
    That would be something they should discuss. Instead, by striking and getting what is a well above-average salary, it could be argued they are perpetuating the suffering of future workers to have to put up with those conditions, on account of having created a very attractive 'pull' in the form of a good salary. There could perhaps be some way of bringing in automation, moving existing employees into different roles for the remainder of their careers and therefore satisfying both aims. Instead, from the outside, the tube unions seem to go on strike every other month. I don't see my water, gas, electricity or internet connections being switched off because workers at those companies are striking. Tube workers seem more than happy to inflict financial damage and inconvenience on the other 8 million people who live in London and who depend on them. Apparently they don't care that their actions are likely to be having a much more damaging impact on those Londoners on average salaries (as well as the large numbers on below average salaries). I know someone on the breadline who works all hours and makes an absolute pittance. One day of not being able to go to work for someone in such a situation can literally risk their job, rent and ability to feed themselves. I find the actions of the - by comparison wealthy - Tube unions generally disgraceful.
  - vacri 11y ago
    By Brennan's justification, all professional drivers should be paid double the national median - after all, they all do 8-hour shifts in a metal box. The real challenge is finding someone who thinks that their industry should be paid less in general - every industry thinks it's undervalued.
- chriswarbo 11y ago
  His claim is that the conditions, on their own, would be considered bad; that the pay, on its own, would be considered good (at least, good enough to require justification). The drivers, by deciding to take the job, consider the goodness of the pay vs the badness of the conditions to balance at a level which is at least as good as they could find elsewhere (otherwise, they'd quit and go elsewhere). Hence, it's not hypocritical to say that bad conditions justify a high pay; whilst also considering the overall conditions/pay balance to be good, and hence worth striking over.
Havoc 11y ago
I've made peace with the fact that life isn't fair...and work hard to be on the right side of that coin toss.
anonymfus 11y ago
How hedonic adaptation produces just world assumption.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
iagooar 11y ago
I think the article misses the point. Since when do you need to "justify" getting a salary that is above average? I see it as simple as: I wanted X, I was offered X-10%, we settled on X-5%. I don't need to justify anything, to anyone.
- octo_t 11y ago
  When your X is double, triple (sometimes even quadruple) the national median, I think you need to justify why you wanted (and felt entitled to) X.
  - whatok 11y ago
    Why?
  - fieryscribe 11y ago
    Why? If someone is willing to offer me X, they value what I can do at X (or more). Why does that need justification if it's some multiple of the median?
  - realusername 11y ago
    Prepare yourself for the downvotes... Every time you suggest that some people are payed too much relative to others in the society which creates massive inequality you have a rush of libertarians trying to justify that it works as expected.
  - oblio 11y ago
    That justification is usually done once, to the employer/client :)
  - jessedhillon 11y ago
    Someone felt that, even at this price, they would be able to profit from my work. Above that, what other justification could there possibly be? Or, if you are an entrepreneur, your earnings are derived from organizing and selling the work of others. Again, what other justification exists, apart from "this many people wanted to pay me this price, those guys said they would do it for me at a smaller price, and I kept the difference."
emblem21 11y ago
Justify? I make what I make because I convinced someone I was worth it. No other factor matters. Not my education, not my history, not my skills... it's just a question of "Who sells who? Either they sell me that I'm worthless or I sell them that I'm useful." Every worker is a gamble for any company that hires them: Will this person generate more revenue than that person costs? In the world of tech, as long as huge gains are possible, it is your job to convince others you are worth that risk. In a world where tech no longer yields such gains... well... that's a different story.
lukasm 11y ago
Well this demonstrates how economically illiterate people are. What matters is market rate and how well you negotiate. The rest is part of market rate equation or irrerevant.
- fsloth 11y ago
  Those are not the only variables affecting leverage when negotiating pay. As reference see Hollywood actor paychecks after and before Michael Ovitz and CAA.
  - lukasm 11y ago
    Yes they are. He negotiated market rate for the actors.
    - fsloth 11y ago
      Ok, if we take this wide view then yes. But "market rate" is not always a very descriptive when discussing pricing in general because there are often time corner cases where the phenomenon that's actually important is not captured by it. I.e. in market situations where the price can be effectively agreed in an oligopoly then the discussion about oligopolists' pricing has a social context as well, and things like "political leverage" are far more important in studying the phenomenon in larger context than just observing the preset "market rate".
Rainymood 11y ago
I have spent the last X years studying hard and earning good grades. I still have nearly 5 years (planning on getting a PhD after this terminal MSc) left of education ahead of me. Why do I do this? Because it makes me entitled to a higher pay? No. I do this because I enjoy studying. Am I entitled to a higher pay? No! But I have spent the last X years NOT earning an income. The longer you are working to amass a certain skill set the longer you defer income you could have earned. It would be nice to recoup that. Not everyone can do what I (and my fellow) peers can do and thus we have some sort of leverage in an interview. I demand X, they offer Y and then I can negotiate because I have certain skills they want. If they want skill set Z and there are 100 people lining up in front of the building with exactly the same skill set they can just say find the first person that agrees to their abhorrent demands. Does a higher education make you entitled to a higher pay? No. It's all about supply and demand. This post has become kind of ranty, long, and unstructured. Sorry.
- zo1 11y ago
  It's also about value, not just supply and demand. Your extra X years of studying most likely includes increases in the value that you can provide a potential employer.
nxzero 11y ago
Funny thing is the opposite is true too; if you make less than others, at some point people expect an explanation. __________ Even more bizarrely, if for some reason people believe you're doing "nothing" they rapidly switch to projecting their expectations of what doing nothing means to them. In the end, it's just hard for people to understand that some people are different than them and the answer is not to suggest everyone be the same.
cubano 11y ago
I wouldn't even attempt to justify this in a market-based economy...earning as much as you can to take care of yourself and your family and shelter them from the vagaries of life is kinda the point, right? Actors acting in their interest to maximize happiness and well-being is the basis of all modern non-Marxist economies, and every metric related to those goals shows that this albeit-non-perfect-system works pretty damn good. There really isn't any point in rehashing the 160yo Marxism v. Capitalism argument here, I know, but there is almost zero evidence that in a wildly diversified and large society (not Sweden or Denmark, for example), that a government-controlled economy can bring happiness and well-being to its people.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Wildly diversified and large society? As far as I remember Germany has 1/3rd of the population of the US – and a social democracy very similar to Denmark or Sweden. And Germany has large immigrant populations as well. Could you explain why this concept can work with 80 million people in Germany, but not, say, the 40 million people living in California?
  - cubano 11y ago
    Germany is a complex and rather unique blend between both systems, and frankly wasn't really that diverse until rather recently with Merkel's high-volume immigration policies. The US has a plenty of "safety-net socialism" as well, so I'm not sure of your point you are making about CA..a country that almost doubles its national debt ($12t to $20t) in only 8 years is surely doing its best to provide for its people, no? For how many generations is that possible before the country bankrupts itself?
    - kuschku 11y ago
      > frankly wasn't really that diverse until rather recently with Merkel's high-volume immigration policies. That’s not true. The current influx of foreigners is about an order of magnitude smaller than the influx of foreigners from Turkey during the 70s.
riotdash 11y ago
Why would anyone need to justify his/her salary? It's very simple: supply & demand. If you are a specialist of a certain field where there is lack of people doing it, you'll probably earn more than average. If we stop letting unions and others harass the free system and companies could hire people easily over the borders we could all earn what we really deserve. The most ridiculous thing today is the extremely high salaries of the working class in western countries. People with trivial and easily automatable jobs keep complaining that companies are taking jobs to China, but then at the same time they demand the same salaries as academically educated professionals doing difficult work and even though there would be millions of people in China, India, Philippines etc. ready to come to this country and do the same work for 1/5 - 1/10 of his/her salary, that's just not allowed...derpderp
aaronhoffman 11y ago
Supply vs Demand x Potential Benefit of your position?
facepalm 11y ago
I think it should be the other way round: if somebody thinks somebody else is being paid too much, they should have to explain why they think that is possible. That is, there has to be a market failure and they should explain what caused it. Often the envy seems to be about jobs where people have little idea of what is involved. For example in banking or being a CEO. I guess most people have a rough idea of the importance of a doctors skill, so they complain less. I also see few complaints about artists earning millions of dollars. How does Beyonce justify her income - maybe she should be replaced by some random street musician?
- whatok 11y ago
  People absolutely complain about artists earning millions of dollars. Do you remember Lars and Napster?
  - facepalm 11y ago
    To be honest, I don't remember. I know Napster, but not Lars.
eulji 11y ago
95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks. We are not. 5% of population is working on really groundbreaking stuff. We are just lucky we are in demand but our time will come as well and then those Senior Software Engineers that brag about how they are rich and successful will be useless once again. 95% of software is pure s...t so please show some respect. The more I work in IT and meet more people the more I appreciate "normal workers" that take care of our stomachs,clothing,trash and so on.
- nailer 11y ago
  > 95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks. I don't think anyone is saying we're better people. Programming - even basic programming - is harder than driving a car.
  - eulji 11y ago
    That does not mean it's more useful than being able to drive a car properly. It's pure capitalism I get it. I like capitalism okay ? I live in a socialist corrupt hellhole. Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly. That's why the rich countries are outsourcing to cheaper countries so much. How do you justify 150k salary in US vs 25k salary in India ? Different costs of living ? Yes and no. In many poor countries some stuff is just more expensive than in the richer ones.
    - fche 11y ago
      "Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly." It's more useful TO THE BUYER. That's why the buyer TRADES MORE MONEY for it. No one cares what third parties think about "value" or "difficulty" or "justification".
    - nailer 11y ago
      I'm actually surprised people are asked to justify why harder jobs should be paid more. Someone considering that they deserve the same as someone else for doing and easier job is a kind of entitlement. I'd like to see someone justify that.
stkni 11y ago
This topic is explored in Michael Sandel's book Justice[1]. IIRC his conclusion is that we are products of our environment and as such we owe a debt to the environment that helped create us: university, school, parents and not least of all the society that helped to build everything that came before us. So the question should not be how do you justify earning it but just how much can you justify keeping it? Kind of lefty, I know, but it's Friday :) [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do-ebook/dp/B002RUA4XE?ie=UTF8&ref_=dp_kinw_strp_1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do-ebook/d...
- wiz21c 11y ago
  I prefer a lefty guy on a friday than all those cynical-I-deserve-to-be-rich-they-deserve-to-be-poor guys on monday, thursday, wednesday, tuesday ...
vintermann 11y ago
Instead of talking about money, turn it into man-hours. How many regular people do you deserve working full-time for your personal benefit? I think that puts claims on millions of dollars in perspective. Of course, given global inequality, most of us here probably have more than one full time servant-equivalent working for us.
Patient0 11y ago
I wish someone in the article had said something like this: We live in a society where individuals are mostly free to negotiate salary and compensation with whoever they choose to work for, and employers are in turn free to negotiate with who they want to employ. The actual compensation then comes down to a mixture of supply, demand and negotiation skills. This can often lead to "unfair" outcomes - but we've found that alternative systems in which prices and wages are externally regulated result in everyone being worse off. Why is this so? It is not so much to do with how hard people work, but how much risk-takers are compensated for taking on risk. If risk takers aren't adequately compensated (and for sure, part of what they are risking is the time they are spending), it becomes irrational for anyone to take on the risk, and so no-one does. Then, everyone is worse off. To give a concrete (but arguably overly simplified) example: During the industrial revolution, there were lots of different attempts at making more efficient steam engines. It wasn't possible to know up front which designs were going to work and which weren't. But people were motivated to try lots of different things, because they knew that if they succeeded, all of the time and money spent researching each failed attempt would be more than paid for once they succeeded. Without that compensation though, it doesn't make sense to even try, leaving everyone with the inefficient steam engines.
- synthmeat 11y ago
  ...but demand profile resulted in supply of articles of different variety and quality.
  - Patient0 11y ago
    haha! I like it!
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Your concrete example doesn't work. In a system of equal wages you'd still get paid for developing your steam engine even if it didn't work - the safety net means that engineers won't have to take a risk (beyond wasted materials) in order to develop new designs. You'd need a central bureacracy [which is the problem] so you could apply to a group akin to the InstMechEng and they would asign finances for your project or not (or you could self-finance if the costs weren't too high). It also however means that when they make the new design everyone can benefit rather than just them. For sure, some people will consider it only worth working to improve things for themselves and so refuse to work to make new engineering advances. A better example you could give IMO would be something like coal miners. "No one would want to work in a coal mine, as it's high risk, if the reward is the same as working in an office as that's low risk.". I don't think it's true, some people will still want to work manually, despite the risk - people take risks for pleasure so the economics are far more complicated than "people only take risk if there's greater financial compensation". It's a source of sadness for me that one might feel the only reason to do something is to have more than other people rather than to give more, to make everyone's world better. Greed is hard to combat, I certainly haven't managed that, but it's not the only motivation to work.
agentgt 11y ago
> So as pay goes up, workers may feel less and less like they're getting what they deserve. I remember an anecdotal story told in a social psychology class (sadly many many years ago) where a psychologist is annoyed with some kids playing in their yard. So instead of telling them to stop he/she pays them each a quarter ($0.25) and tells them if you come back tomorrow I will pay you $0.50 to play in the yard. The kids do and he repeats his promise but raises the pay to a $1.00. The kids come and the psychologist pays them. The final day the kids come but the psychologist tells the kids he is all out of money..... What do the kids do? They stop playing in the yard. Something they did for free they are not willing to do anymore because they are no longer paid. Sadly I can't remember what theory the anecdote was teaching (maybe consistency theory?).
fche 11y ago
How do people justify asking such stupid questions?

32 points by edward 11y ago

> Finn Brennan, who drove London Underground trains for 23 years and now works for union Aslef, says drivers deserve their £49,673 annual pay because they do a "difficult and skilled job". > He says they start work as early as 04:45 and finish as late as 01:30, working eight-hour shifts in a "small metal box underground" - conditions he says would be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" in other circumstances. And yet whenever LU try to automate them they go on strike. Guess it can't be that bad after all. I wonder if he can say "hypocrite"...

mbrutsch 11y ago
Employment == life in our society. They strike when you try to take it away.
entee 11y ago
I don't think it's hypocritical to say a job is difficult and also to say that you want to keep that job. Automation may or may not be a good idea, but I think it's important to be compassionate about those who we lose their livelihood as a result. We as a society don't have a compelling idea for how to help those people yet.
harperlee 11y ago
Eh, it's not inconsistent to have a very bad job, and that such a bad job is better than no job - the same way that one is not a hypocrite for not quitting from a bad job. People generally need money to have shelter, food, healthcare, education, etc. for themselves and their family. Do you think these merit sacrifice?
- estefan 11y ago
  That would be something they should discuss. Instead, by striking and getting what is a well above-average salary, it could be argued they are perpetuating the suffering of future workers to have to put up with those conditions, on account of having created a very attractive 'pull' in the form of a good salary. There could perhaps be some way of bringing in automation, moving existing employees into different roles for the remainder of their careers and therefore satisfying both aims. Instead, from the outside, the tube unions seem to go on strike every other month. I don't see my water, gas, electricity or internet connections being switched off because workers at those companies are striking. Tube workers seem more than happy to inflict financial damage and inconvenience on the other 8 million people who live in London and who depend on them. Apparently they don't care that their actions are likely to be having a much more damaging impact on those Londoners on average salaries (as well as the large numbers on below average salaries). I know someone on the breadline who works all hours and makes an absolute pittance. One day of not being able to go to work for someone in such a situation can literally risk their job, rent and ability to feed themselves. I find the actions of the - by comparison wealthy - Tube unions generally disgraceful.
- vacri 11y ago
  By Brennan's justification, all professional drivers should be paid double the national median - after all, they all do 8-hour shifts in a metal box. The real challenge is finding someone who thinks that their industry should be paid less in general - every industry thinks it's undervalued.
chriswarbo 11y ago
His claim is that the conditions, on their own, would be considered bad; that the pay, on its own, would be considered good (at least, good enough to require justification). The drivers, by deciding to take the job, consider the goodness of the pay vs the badness of the conditions to balance at a level which is at least as good as they could find elsewhere (otherwise, they'd quit and go elsewhere). Hence, it's not hypocritical to say that bad conditions justify a high pay; whilst also considering the overall conditions/pay balance to be good, and hence worth striking over.

Havoc 11y ago

I've made peace with the fact that life isn't fair...and work hard to be on the right side of that coin toss.

anonymfus 11y ago

How hedonic adaptation produces just world assumption.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

iagooar 11y ago

I think the article misses the point. Since when do you need to "justify" getting a salary that is above average? I see it as simple as: I wanted X, I was offered X-10%, we settled on X-5%. I don't need to justify anything, to anyone.

octo_t 11y ago
When your X is double, triple (sometimes even quadruple) the national median, I think you need to justify why you wanted (and felt entitled to) X.
- whatok 11y ago
  Why?
- fieryscribe 11y ago
  Why? If someone is willing to offer me X, they value what I can do at X (or more). Why does that need justification if it's some multiple of the median?
- realusername 11y ago
  Prepare yourself for the downvotes... Every time you suggest that some people are payed too much relative to others in the society which creates massive inequality you have a rush of libertarians trying to justify that it works as expected.
- oblio 11y ago
  That justification is usually done once, to the employer/client :)
- jessedhillon 11y ago
  Someone felt that, even at this price, they would be able to profit from my work. Above that, what other justification could there possibly be? Or, if you are an entrepreneur, your earnings are derived from organizing and selling the work of others. Again, what other justification exists, apart from "this many people wanted to pay me this price, those guys said they would do it for me at a smaller price, and I kept the difference."

emblem21 11y ago

Justify? I make what I make because I convinced someone I was worth it. No other factor matters. Not my education, not my history, not my skills... it's just a question of "Who sells who? Either they sell me that I'm worthless or I sell them that I'm useful." Every worker is a gamble for any company that hires them: Will this person generate more revenue than that person costs? In the world of tech, as long as huge gains are possible, it is your job to convince others you are worth that risk. In a world where tech no longer yields such gains... well... that's a different story.

lukasm 11y ago

Well this demonstrates how economically illiterate people are. What matters is market rate and how well you negotiate. The rest is part of market rate equation or irrerevant.

fsloth 11y ago
Those are not the only variables affecting leverage when negotiating pay. As reference see Hollywood actor paychecks after and before Michael Ovitz and CAA.
- lukasm 11y ago
  Yes they are. He negotiated market rate for the actors.
  - fsloth 11y ago
    Ok, if we take this wide view then yes. But "market rate" is not always a very descriptive when discussing pricing in general because there are often time corner cases where the phenomenon that's actually important is not captured by it. I.e. in market situations where the price can be effectively agreed in an oligopoly then the discussion about oligopolists' pricing has a social context as well, and things like "political leverage" are far more important in studying the phenomenon in larger context than just observing the preset "market rate".

Rainymood 11y ago

I have spent the last X years studying hard and earning good grades. I still have nearly 5 years (planning on getting a PhD after this terminal MSc) left of education ahead of me. Why do I do this? Because it makes me entitled to a higher pay? No. I do this because I enjoy studying. Am I entitled to a higher pay? No! But I have spent the last X years NOT earning an income. The longer you are working to amass a certain skill set the longer you defer income you could have earned. It would be nice to recoup that. Not everyone can do what I (and my fellow) peers can do and thus we have some sort of leverage in an interview. I demand X, they offer Y and then I can negotiate because I have certain skills they want. If they want skill set Z and there are 100 people lining up in front of the building with exactly the same skill set they can just say find the first person that agrees to their abhorrent demands. Does a higher education make you entitled to a higher pay? No. It's all about supply and demand. This post has become kind of ranty, long, and unstructured. Sorry.

zo1 11y ago
It's also about value, not just supply and demand. Your extra X years of studying most likely includes increases in the value that you can provide a potential employer.

nxzero 11y ago

Funny thing is the opposite is true too; if you make less than others, at some point people expect an explanation. __________ Even more bizarrely, if for some reason people believe you're doing "nothing" they rapidly switch to projecting their expectations of what doing nothing means to them. In the end, it's just hard for people to understand that some people are different than them and the answer is not to suggest everyone be the same.

cubano 11y ago

I wouldn't even attempt to justify this in a market-based economy...earning as much as you can to take care of yourself and your family and shelter them from the vagaries of life is kinda the point, right? Actors acting in their interest to maximize happiness and well-being is the basis of all modern non-Marxist economies, and every metric related to those goals shows that this albeit-non-perfect-system works pretty damn good. There really isn't any point in rehashing the 160yo Marxism v. Capitalism argument here, I know, but there is almost zero evidence that in a wildly diversified and large society (not Sweden or Denmark, for example), that a government-controlled economy can bring happiness and well-being to its people.

kuschku 11y ago
Wildly diversified and large society? As far as I remember Germany has 1/3rd of the population of the US – and a social democracy very similar to Denmark or Sweden. And Germany has large immigrant populations as well. Could you explain why this concept can work with 80 million people in Germany, but not, say, the 40 million people living in California?
- cubano 11y ago
  Germany is a complex and rather unique blend between both systems, and frankly wasn't really that diverse until rather recently with Merkel's high-volume immigration policies. The US has a plenty of "safety-net socialism" as well, so I'm not sure of your point you are making about CA..a country that almost doubles its national debt ($12t to $20t) in only 8 years is surely doing its best to provide for its people, no? For how many generations is that possible before the country bankrupts itself?
  - kuschku 11y ago
    > frankly wasn't really that diverse until rather recently with Merkel's high-volume immigration policies. That’s not true. The current influx of foreigners is about an order of magnitude smaller than the influx of foreigners from Turkey during the 70s.

riotdash 11y ago

Why would anyone need to justify his/her salary? It's very simple: supply & demand. If you are a specialist of a certain field where there is lack of people doing it, you'll probably earn more than average. If we stop letting unions and others harass the free system and companies could hire people easily over the borders we could all earn what we really deserve. The most ridiculous thing today is the extremely high salaries of the working class in western countries. People with trivial and easily automatable jobs keep complaining that companies are taking jobs to China, but then at the same time they demand the same salaries as academically educated professionals doing difficult work and even though there would be millions of people in China, India, Philippines etc. ready to come to this country and do the same work for 1/5 - 1/10 of his/her salary, that's just not allowed...derpderp

aaronhoffman 11y ago

Supply vs Demand x Potential Benefit of your position?

facepalm 11y ago

I think it should be the other way round: if somebody thinks somebody else is being paid too much, they should have to explain why they think that is possible. That is, there has to be a market failure and they should explain what caused it. Often the envy seems to be about jobs where people have little idea of what is involved. For example in banking or being a CEO. I guess most people have a rough idea of the importance of a doctors skill, so they complain less. I also see few complaints about artists earning millions of dollars. How does Beyonce justify her income - maybe she should be replaced by some random street musician?

whatok 11y ago
People absolutely complain about artists earning millions of dollars. Do you remember Lars and Napster?
- facepalm 11y ago
  To be honest, I don't remember. I know Napster, but not Lars.

eulji 11y ago

95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks. We are not. 5% of population is working on really groundbreaking stuff. We are just lucky we are in demand but our time will come as well and then those Senior Software Engineers that brag about how they are rich and successful will be useless once again. 95% of software is pure s...t so please show some respect. The more I work in IT and meet more people the more I appreciate "normal workers" that take care of our stomachs,clothing,trash and so on.

nailer 11y ago
> 95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks. I don't think anyone is saying we're better people. Programming - even basic programming - is harder than driving a car.
- eulji 11y ago
  That does not mean it's more useful than being able to drive a car properly. It's pure capitalism I get it. I like capitalism okay ? I live in a socialist corrupt hellhole. Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly. That's why the rich countries are outsourcing to cheaper countries so much. How do you justify 150k salary in US vs 25k salary in India ? Different costs of living ? Yes and no. In many poor countries some stuff is just more expensive than in the richer ones.
  - fche 11y ago
    "Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly." It's more useful TO THE BUYER. That's why the buyer TRADES MORE MONEY for it. No one cares what third parties think about "value" or "difficulty" or "justification".
  - nailer 11y ago
    I'm actually surprised people are asked to justify why harder jobs should be paid more. Someone considering that they deserve the same as someone else for doing and easier job is a kind of entitlement. I'd like to see someone justify that.

stkni 11y ago

This topic is explored in Michael Sandel's book Justice[1]. IIRC his conclusion is that we are products of our environment and as such we owe a debt to the environment that helped create us: university, school, parents and not least of all the society that helped to build everything that came before us. So the question should not be how do you justify earning it but just how much can you justify keeping it? Kind of lefty, I know, but it's Friday :) [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do-ebook/dp/B002RUA4XE?ie=UTF8&ref_=dp_kinw_strp_1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do-ebook/d...

wiz21c 11y ago
I prefer a lefty guy on a friday than all those cynical-I-deserve-to-be-rich-they-deserve-to-be-poor guys on monday, thursday, wednesday, tuesday ...

vintermann 11y ago

Instead of talking about money, turn it into man-hours. How many regular people do you deserve working full-time for your personal benefit? I think that puts claims on millions of dollars in perspective. Of course, given global inequality, most of us here probably have more than one full time servant-equivalent working for us.

Patient0 11y ago

I wish someone in the article had said something like this: We live in a society where individuals are mostly free to negotiate salary and compensation with whoever they choose to work for, and employers are in turn free to negotiate with who they want to employ. The actual compensation then comes down to a mixture of supply, demand and negotiation skills. This can often lead to "unfair" outcomes - but we've found that alternative systems in which prices and wages are externally regulated result in everyone being worse off. Why is this so? It is not so much to do with how hard people work, but how much risk-takers are compensated for taking on risk. If risk takers aren't adequately compensated (and for sure, part of what they are risking is the time they are spending), it becomes irrational for anyone to take on the risk, and so no-one does. Then, everyone is worse off. To give a concrete (but arguably overly simplified) example: During the industrial revolution, there were lots of different attempts at making more efficient steam engines. It wasn't possible to know up front which designs were going to work and which weren't. But people were motivated to try lots of different things, because they knew that if they succeeded, all of the time and money spent researching each failed attempt would be more than paid for once they succeeded. Without that compensation though, it doesn't make sense to even try, leaving everyone with the inefficient steam engines.

synthmeat 11y ago
...but demand profile resulted in supply of articles of different variety and quality.
- Patient0 11y ago
  haha! I like it!
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Your concrete example doesn't work. In a system of equal wages you'd still get paid for developing your steam engine even if it didn't work - the safety net means that engineers won't have to take a risk (beyond wasted materials) in order to develop new designs. You'd need a central bureacracy [which is the problem] so you could apply to a group akin to the InstMechEng and they would asign finances for your project or not (or you could self-finance if the costs weren't too high). It also however means that when they make the new design everyone can benefit rather than just them. For sure, some people will consider it only worth working to improve things for themselves and so refuse to work to make new engineering advances. A better example you could give IMO would be something like coal miners. "No one would want to work in a coal mine, as it's high risk, if the reward is the same as working in an office as that's low risk.". I don't think it's true, some people will still want to work manually, despite the risk - people take risks for pleasure so the economics are far more complicated than "people only take risk if there's greater financial compensation". It's a source of sadness for me that one might feel the only reason to do something is to have more than other people rather than to give more, to make everyone's world better. Greed is hard to combat, I certainly haven't managed that, but it's not the only motivation to work.

agentgt 11y ago

> So as pay goes up, workers may feel less and less like they're getting what they deserve. I remember an anecdotal story told in a social psychology class (sadly many many years ago) where a psychologist is annoyed with some kids playing in their yard. So instead of telling them to stop he/she pays them each a quarter ($0.25) and tells them if you come back tomorrow I will pay you $0.50 to play in the yard. The kids do and he repeats his promise but raises the pay to a $1.00. The kids come and the psychologist pays them. The final day the kids come but the psychologist tells the kids he is all out of money..... What do the kids do? They stop playing in the yard. Something they did for free they are not willing to do anymore because they are no longer paid. Sadly I can't remember what theory the anecdote was teaching (maybe consistency theory?).

fche 11y ago

How do people justify asking such stupid questions?