no5no5, if you don't mind me asking, what do you believe should be the basis of how much money people make? Do you believe it should be A) whatever the free market will bare? Or should it B) involve some measure of how much time and money they have sacrificed to achieve their position?
No, I don't mind you asking, and actually this is a topic that I have thought long and hard about. I believe that in an ideal society (which is obviously not actually achievable), people would make money based on (1) how much they like their job; (2) how hard their job is; (3) how easy it would be for others to do that job; and (4) how good they are at their job. Doctors theoretically like their jobs, but their jobs are really hard and they're not easy to replace. So I think they should make more than an average person. Good doctors should make more than bad doctors. I think my list of factors would actually result in a pretty similar salary to what a free market system (if one of those existed) would come up with. Of course, we don't have a free market system, and I don't honestly believe that they're possible.
If you say yes to either of those, how can you possibly believe that a physician is worth only $100k/year, even if it's while working 40 hours a week? You're husband is a resident, so you see how much dedication he's put into it first-hand. Do you really think what he's gone through and what he's going to do for the rest of his working life is only worth $100k/year? Is keeping people healthy and saving their lives really so mundane as to be worth a mere $100k/year? Hell, my dad has a BS and an MBA and he makes more than that as a power plant manager working 40 hours a week.
I think you have (understandably) misunderstood my previous post in which I said that I thought $100k/year is a good wage. What I meant is that I would be satisfied if I made that much. I didn't mean that doctors shouldn't get paid more than that. Sorry that wasn't clear. Personally, my husband loves medicine and would do it for much less than $100k a year if he had to. But then, we don't have any desire to live in the big city.
As for this quote of yours:
That's just a flat out horrible sentiment that smacks of moral relativism. I seriously hope you're joking and don't actually believe that it is A) right or B) true. How about all those good, middle-class working people that lost their entire retirement funds when Enron collapsed? Only stealing from rich people? No, that's far from true.
Yeah, okay.
I was being a bit tongue in cheek because I didn't want to get into details. Actually, if I happened to be lurking on a stockbroker's forum in which stockbrokers were talking about how unfair it is that some people think they make a load of money, I would probably post to say that they do, in fact, make a load of money.
I do think that it's particularly ironic that doctors engage in overwork for money, since the profession is all about health. Stockbrokers, one expects this from, since their profession is all about money.
But I really don't think that Enron has anything to do with this because Enron was a result of unethical behavior, not a result of legally high stockbroker salaries.
High stockbroker salaries, on the other hand, when they are legally earned, are a result of their making people money...so one doesn't really worry about the people they are making money for as much as one worries about people who have no money to invest. I absolutely think it's worse to steal from poor people than it is to steal from rich people. I don't think that's morally relativist. It's a bigger harm because it has a bigger impact on their lives. I'm not saying it's right to steal from rich people, I'm just saying that rich people can generally take care of themselves, so I don't feel as obligated to stick up for them.
