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New Report/Dataset: Just 10% of Workers Receive Nearly Half of Global Pay

26 points by infodocket 7y ago

zxcvvcxz 7y ago
Of course, human achievement is full of Pareto distributions. Same with mating - a small percentage of say 10% of men mate with half the women or so. Throughout history you have twice as many female ancestors as Male ancestors. Success accumulates at the top.
- eloff 7y ago
  The mating thing is no longer true. Unless you define it as offspring, but those are hardly successful men in financial terms. If you define it as dating or sex it's true. But most men marry - a relatively recent thing in human society.
hdpq 7y ago
Global pay ... in the US, if you earn minimum wage, you're in the top 1%.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  > in the US, if you earn minimum wage, you're in the top 1%. The US has well over 1% of the global workforce, so it's mathematically impossible for the lowest paid US worker to be in the top 1% of wages and the least wealthy full time US worker to be in the top 1% of wealth.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  Actually, you need around $34K a year to be in the top 1% globally.
eloff 7y ago
Or phrased another way, 10% of employees deliver 50% of the value. If you use pay as a (very) rough proxy for value. When phrased that way it seems conservative. Of course 10% of the people deliver half the value, I would have pegged it more like 10% deliver 80% of the value. And maybe it is more that way, because pay doesn't scale with value in most careers. CEOs being one of the few exceptions - and the value often dubious.
- djrobstep 7y ago
  This is incredibly circular. "The reason these people are highly paid is because they deliver value." "But what is value?" "Why it's what people get paid of course!" In reality, pay isn't at all a proxy for anything humans actually value. If it was, nurses and teachers would be extremely highly paid, while advertising executives and sharepoint consultants would be paid less than zero.
  - derefr 7y ago
    > pay isn't at all a proxy for anything humans actually value Sure it is: pay is a proxy for how valuable a tool you are in your own boss's game of office politics. Executives and consultants are both incredibly powerful fiefdom-building tools within a company. Nurses and teachers, given their principles (and the horizontally-bureaucratic "slave of many masters" nature of medicine and education), are nearly the opposite.
  - shoo 7y ago
    i agree that it is necessary to clearly separate "value delivered" from "value extracted". but i think you also need to talk about "value for who?" Who gains?. Who loses? e.g. advertising executives can deliver a large amount of value to the owners of companies by helping those companies generate demand and increase sales. But perhaps at the same time they create or destroy value for the people on the receiving end of the advertising (in the best case, discovering a product or service that genuinely helps them, in the worst case, tricking them into consuming a product or service that is harmful). There is probably also value destruction, spread in small amounts over large populations and large timescales, in terms of the opportunity cost of committing resources to producing whatever product or service was sold, instead of doing something else with those resources that would benefit a larger group of people, or a future group of people who don't exist yet. e.g. "i helped my mate Frank deliver a large amount of value by driving the getaway car after Frank robbed the bank". Frank has a business that generates value for himself. I helped Frank deliver that value from the bank to himself. Frank gives me a cut of the value. It is possible that we also may generate value for various other stakeholders by improving the velocity of currency throughout the local economy.
  - 7y ago
IdontRememberIt 7y ago
Yeah, and these UN guys are on the top of the unecessary overpaid people. I live where they all live in Geneva. Their kids go in the top private schools, they fly business, their wifes drive luxury suvs, they do not pay taxes... But most of them employ illegal nannies and cleaning ladies, etc. So preaching what they never do at home makes them not really liked by locals. BTW, did you know that interns were working for free? (It is a taboo). https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/unpaid-labour_geneva-interns-take-part-in-global-protest/42969242 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/unpaid-labour_geneva-interns-ta...

26 points by infodocket 7y ago

Of course, human achievement is full of Pareto distributions. Same with mating - a small percentage of say 10% of men mate with half the women or so. Throughout history you have twice as many female ancestors as Male ancestors. Success accumulates at the top.

eloff 7y ago
The mating thing is no longer true. Unless you define it as offspring, but those are hardly successful men in financial terms. If you define it as dating or sex it's true. But most men marry - a relatively recent thing in human society.

hdpq 7y ago

Global pay ... in the US, if you earn minimum wage, you're in the top 1%.

sokoloff 7y ago
> in the US, if you earn minimum wage, you're in the top 1%. The US has well over 1% of the global workforce, so it's mathematically impossible for the lowest paid US worker to be in the top 1% of wages and the least wealthy full time US worker to be in the top 1% of wealth.
ivanhoe 7y ago
Actually, you need around $34K a year to be in the top 1% globally.

eloff 7y ago

Or phrased another way, 10% of employees deliver 50% of the value. If you use pay as a (very) rough proxy for value. When phrased that way it seems conservative. Of course 10% of the people deliver half the value, I would have pegged it more like 10% deliver 80% of the value. And maybe it is more that way, because pay doesn't scale with value in most careers. CEOs being one of the few exceptions - and the value often dubious.

djrobstep 7y ago
This is incredibly circular. "The reason these people are highly paid is because they deliver value." "But what is value?" "Why it's what people get paid of course!" In reality, pay isn't at all a proxy for anything humans actually value. If it was, nurses and teachers would be extremely highly paid, while advertising executives and sharepoint consultants would be paid less than zero.
- derefr 7y ago
  > pay isn't at all a proxy for anything humans actually value Sure it is: pay is a proxy for how valuable a tool you are in your own boss's game of office politics. Executives and consultants are both incredibly powerful fiefdom-building tools within a company. Nurses and teachers, given their principles (and the horizontally-bureaucratic "slave of many masters" nature of medicine and education), are nearly the opposite.
- shoo 7y ago
  i agree that it is necessary to clearly separate "value delivered" from "value extracted". but i think you also need to talk about "value for who?" Who gains?. Who loses? e.g. advertising executives can deliver a large amount of value to the owners of companies by helping those companies generate demand and increase sales. But perhaps at the same time they create or destroy value for the people on the receiving end of the advertising (in the best case, discovering a product or service that genuinely helps them, in the worst case, tricking them into consuming a product or service that is harmful). There is probably also value destruction, spread in small amounts over large populations and large timescales, in terms of the opportunity cost of committing resources to producing whatever product or service was sold, instead of doing something else with those resources that would benefit a larger group of people, or a future group of people who don't exist yet. e.g. "i helped my mate Frank deliver a large amount of value by driving the getaway car after Frank robbed the bank". Frank has a business that generates value for himself. I helped Frank deliver that value from the bank to himself. Frank gives me a cut of the value. It is possible that we also may generate value for various other stakeholders by improving the velocity of currency throughout the local economy.
- 7y ago

IdontRememberIt 7y ago

Yeah, and these UN guys are on the top of the unecessary overpaid people. I live where they all live in Geneva. Their kids go in the top private schools, they fly business, their wifes drive luxury suvs, they do not pay taxes... But most of them employ illegal nannies and cleaning ladies, etc. So preaching what they never do at home makes them not really liked by locals. BTW, did you know that interns were working for free? (It is a taboo). https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/unpaid-labour_geneva-interns-take-part-in-global-protest/42969242 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/unpaid-labour_geneva-interns-ta...