> An elementary school teacher is only paid a small amount relative to most celebrities because their impact is small. They cannot reach more 10-30 students at

> An elementary school teacher is only paid a small amount relative to most celebrities because their impact is small. They cannot reach more 10-30 students at a time. A baseball player is paid millions because he (through cable TV) can impact/entertain many more anonymous people indirectly. Is it fair? I would say it is fair, if you define fair to mean that what someone gets paid should roughly reflect the utility they create for others. Rockstars and baseball players can reach a large audience and give pleasure to them. If a teacher is only helping c. 30 students, then even if each one of them gains far more utility from him than from a rockstar, the total amount of utility the teacher is creating isn't going to be as much, because of the smaller audience. To put it another way: some jobs aren't scalable, some jobs are (e.g. musicians, sports stars), and the top people in the jobs that're scalable are going to create a lot more utility, and in a market economy earn a lot more money, than the top people in the unscalable jobs.