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This. My brother a highly educated health care worker wanted to move back to Canada. The only catch is he was offered $20usd/hr less working in Canada then wher

by 14 5y ago

This. My brother a highly educated health care worker wanted to move back to Canada. The only catch is he was offered $20usd/hr less working in Canada then where he is in Washington. Think about that. He basically would have to turn down my entire years wage to get a job here. He has so much more earning potential down south then here it is absurd. Or perhaps what is absurd is how much he is paid for his job. I’m leaving towards the paid too much.

ta988 5y ago
Yes some salaries are absurd in US. Look at programmers, no other country pays that much. Look at CEOs, same thing. By not capping salaries with reasonable caps we just completely broke the system (edit: I wrote market but meant something more like system), and it will be hard to revert that. But it may not be bad to have doctors that care more about their patients than their money, I've met my share of absolutely inhumane doctors and MD students.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Paying someone more than what their counterparts in other countries get is not breaking the market. Good luck incentivizing the smartest kids to go through the torture chamber that they have to in order to become a doctor without the high pay potential. I suspect, proportionally, many smart parents and kids have already chosen to avoid careers in medicine due to the coming squeeze in pay. The better way to decrease labor costs is to increase labor supply. Make it so you do not have to sacrifice your 20s to become a doctor. Make it so kids are not looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt by the time they are a doctor and in their early 30s when they need to be thinking about starting families. There is no physical limitation why we cannot start preparing kids for careers halfway through high school and have them working by 25. Or why residency spots are so limited so there is a cap on how many doctors are added.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Why would we want the smartest kids to become doctors? Maybe the small fraction of doctors that are working on new or improved treatments, but most doctors treat one person at a time. I’d rather have the smartest kids go into a field where they can do work that impacts millions or billions of people.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      That is a good question. Maybe the US has been unnecessarily using over qualified people.
    - antasvara 5y ago
      What field impacts millions and isn't currently being paid well enough? I think the point being made here is that most of the jobs that pay super well don't create the same amount of "value" (and I use this loosely, as it's a super subjective term) as a doctor.
    - ta988 5y ago
      It is not just the number of people but he impact on each of these single person. Saving a life has an impact on more than one person as it is what allows that person to benefit society (potentially) for many more years (ideally).
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        If you have one really smart person and she can either work for Ford improving safety features on all their vehicles to prevent accidents or be a really great trauma surgeon treating people that have been in accidents—-which one is likely to save more lives?
        CogitoCogito 5y ago
        Probably the doctor. I'm serious. There are probably hundreds of people working at Ford on safety features. The number of auto deaths in the US seems to be pretty stable at around 35k the last few years. Say Ford single-handedly dropped that number by a few hundred over the period an engineer worked there (say 5 years). Then I guess that averaged out that engineer saved roughly one life due to the efforts. Of course all the numbers are just pulled out of my ass (well other than the 35k number which I got from Wikipedia), but even if it's off by 10x, a doctor could still easily save more people in that time frame. Anyway my point isn't to prove you wrong (picking random numbers and doing random extrapolation won't do that), but just to say that your point, will reasonable on the surface, probably needs to a bit more analysis if one is to take it too seriously. edit: I would really appreciate the downvoters' thoughts. I'm really failing to see the fault in my thought process here. Please enlighten me.
  - ta988 5y ago
    In the US, what would such a squeeze in pay look like? Did it happen in other kind of jobs?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Could be nominal, such as being paid less simply because you do not have another option. US pharmacists have had declining nominal pay and declining quality of life at work since at least 2016, and their pay had stagnated years before that. Check out the pharmacy forums on sdn or reddit, they are depressing. Doctors, however, bring in money and can generate revenue. Their decrease in pay would probably be via quality of life at work. The biggest complaint I see lack of autonomy and being managed like a cog in the machine. Most likely, individual doctor will have no negotiating power with the people that pay them (governments and managed care organizations, aka insurers). Therefore, they will need to become part of a doctor group, usually as an employee. If you are at the bottom of the totem pole here, the employer is probably going to want to squeeze as much out of you as possible. Expect this to vary based on how desirable the area is you live in and how many competing doctors there are. I also see many healthcare groups using nurse practitioners and physician's assistants far more than before. So when you go in for a healthcare visit, you will not actually see a doctor, but rather a PA/NP, who is (supposedly) under the purview of a doctor. But I am not aware of any standards that would prevent a doctor from having to be in charge of too many PA/NP that quality would start slipping, so I presume the workload will get higher and higher if doctors do not have much leverage with the employer. Again, probably will vary on how desirable the area the doctor is in and if the doctor's employer can choose to be picky or not.
- didgeoridoo 5y ago
  > By not capping salaries with reasonable caps we just completely broke the market I am very interested in your definition of the word “market”.
  - ta988 5y ago
    I didn't meant market sorry about that.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    At least in health care, it is already nothing like a free market.

by 14 5y ago

ta988 5y ago

Yes some salaries are absurd in US. Look at programmers, no other country pays that much. Look at CEOs, same thing. By not capping salaries with reasonable caps we just completely broke the system (edit: I wrote market but meant something more like system), and it will be hard to revert that. But it may not be bad to have doctors that care more about their patients than their money, I've met my share of absolutely inhumane doctors and MD students.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Paying someone more than what their counterparts in other countries get is not breaking the market. Good luck incentivizing the smartest kids to go through the torture chamber that they have to in order to become a doctor without the high pay potential. I suspect, proportionally, many smart parents and kids have already chosen to avoid careers in medicine due to the coming squeeze in pay. The better way to decrease labor costs is to increase labor supply. Make it so you do not have to sacrifice your 20s to become a doctor. Make it so kids are not looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt by the time they are a doctor and in their early 30s when they need to be thinking about starting families. There is no physical limitation why we cannot start preparing kids for careers halfway through high school and have them working by 25. Or why residency spots are so limited so there is a cap on how many doctors are added.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Why would we want the smartest kids to become doctors? Maybe the small fraction of doctors that are working on new or improved treatments, but most doctors treat one person at a time. I’d rather have the smartest kids go into a field where they can do work that impacts millions or billions of people.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That is a good question. Maybe the US has been unnecessarily using over qualified people.
  - antasvara 5y ago
    What field impacts millions and isn't currently being paid well enough? I think the point being made here is that most of the jobs that pay super well don't create the same amount of "value" (and I use this loosely, as it's a super subjective term) as a doctor.
  - ta988 5y ago
    It is not just the number of people but he impact on each of these single person. Saving a life has an impact on more than one person as it is what allows that person to benefit society (potentially) for many more years (ideally).
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      If you have one really smart person and she can either work for Ford improving safety features on all their vehicles to prevent accidents or be a really great trauma surgeon treating people that have been in accidents—-which one is likely to save more lives?
      - CogitoCogito 5y ago
        Probably the doctor. I'm serious. There are probably hundreds of people working at Ford on safety features. The number of auto deaths in the US seems to be pretty stable at around 35k the last few years. Say Ford single-handedly dropped that number by a few hundred over the period an engineer worked there (say 5 years). Then I guess that averaged out that engineer saved roughly one life due to the efforts. Of course all the numbers are just pulled out of my ass (well other than the 35k number which I got from Wikipedia), but even if it's off by 10x, a doctor could still easily save more people in that time frame. Anyway my point isn't to prove you wrong (picking random numbers and doing random extrapolation won't do that), but just to say that your point, will reasonable on the surface, probably needs to a bit more analysis if one is to take it too seriously. edit: I would really appreciate the downvoters' thoughts. I'm really failing to see the fault in my thought process here. Please enlighten me.
- ta988 5y ago
  In the US, what would such a squeeze in pay look like? Did it happen in other kind of jobs?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Could be nominal, such as being paid less simply because you do not have another option. US pharmacists have had declining nominal pay and declining quality of life at work since at least 2016, and their pay had stagnated years before that. Check out the pharmacy forums on sdn or reddit, they are depressing. Doctors, however, bring in money and can generate revenue. Their decrease in pay would probably be via quality of life at work. The biggest complaint I see lack of autonomy and being managed like a cog in the machine. Most likely, individual doctor will have no negotiating power with the people that pay them (governments and managed care organizations, aka insurers). Therefore, they will need to become part of a doctor group, usually as an employee. If you are at the bottom of the totem pole here, the employer is probably going to want to squeeze as much out of you as possible. Expect this to vary based on how desirable the area is you live in and how many competing doctors there are. I also see many healthcare groups using nurse practitioners and physician's assistants far more than before. So when you go in for a healthcare visit, you will not actually see a doctor, but rather a PA/NP, who is (supposedly) under the purview of a doctor. But I am not aware of any standards that would prevent a doctor from having to be in charge of too many PA/NP that quality would start slipping, so I presume the workload will get higher and higher if doctors do not have much leverage with the employer. Again, probably will vary on how desirable the area the doctor is in and if the doctor's employer can choose to be picky or not.
didgeoridoo 5y ago
> By not capping salaries with reasonable caps we just completely broke the market I am very interested in your definition of the word “market”.
- ta988 5y ago
  I didn't meant market sorry about that.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  At least in health care, it is already nothing like a free market.