You created the designation, you can expand it whenever you want. The average commodities trader earns 35% more than the average teacher, with a FAR less generous benefits package and no summers off. Seems fair enough to me.
Most people tend to take jobs that maximize their earnings potential, which is based on the value/potential for pro…
You created the designation, you can expand it whenever you want. The average commodities trader earns 35% more than the average teacher, with a FAR less generous benefits package and no summers off. Seems fair enough to me.
Most people tend to take jobs that maximize their earnings potential, which is based on the value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others. So yes, technically those below the median are more likely to be inferior, in aggregate offering. This isn't Lake Wobegon, we can't all be above average.
Reducing the value of a person's contribution to their society and the planet to their personal net monetary worth is about as dehumanizing a value system as it gets. It's non-thinking bot reaction. Actually thinking about that vast set of circumstances requires examining the implications that are so easily disguised by the numbers on a spreadsheet.
We have entire occupational classes that pay well above "the median income" that fulfill societal functions that fall somewhere between superfluous, ephemeral, parasitic, and criminal. I'm not opposed to people making money off of the first two categories, but I'm not deluded with notions about the "superiority" of the "value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others", compared to, say, a competent and compassionate home health caregiver, or the maintenance staff in my apartment building. Or a public school teacher.
I just read The Bling Ring, by Nancy Jo Sales. I'm in no mood to hear that nonsense.
(The Bling Ring is a very good work of investigative journalism. I'd like to have Matt Taibbi review it. In fact, maybe it ought to be assigned reading in high schools.)
Not "their" society, just society. There are 7 billion people, I will never meet the overwhelming majority of them, they will never meet me. To me, they're all just cogs in the machine, as I am to them. On average, those who are contributing more to the standard of living that both of us enjoy are paid more than those who don't. Yes, there are always exceptions. I'm sure your maintenance man is a lovely person, but a particle physicist could do everything that he does. The reverse is probably not true. Only one can substitute for the other, those with more substitutions available *generally* choose to maximize earnings, which involves taking a position where they provide benefit to more people.
Those commodity traders you seem to scoff at are the only reason your venerated public teachers can collect the pensions they do, as in many, if not all, states the unions negotiated based on potential market returns (and rely on taxpayers to pick up the difference if projections aren't met).
You created the designation, you can expand it whenever you want. The average commodities trader earns 35% more than the average teacher, with a FAR less generous benefits package and no summers off. Seems fair enough to me.
Most people tend to take jobs that maximize their earnings potential, which is based on the value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others. So yes, technically those below the median are more likely to be inferior, in aggregate offering. This isn't Lake Wobegon, we can't all be above average.
Reducing the value of a person's contribution to their society and the planet to their personal net monetary worth is about as dehumanizing a value system as it gets. It's non-thinking bot reaction. Actually thinking about that vast set of circumstances requires examining the implications that are so easily disguised by the numbers on a spreadsheet.
We have entire occupational classes that pay well above "the median income" that fulfill societal functions that fall somewhere between superfluous, ephemeral, parasitic, and criminal. I'm not opposed to people making money off of the first two categories, but I'm not deluded with notions about the "superiority" of the "value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others", compared to, say, a competent and compassionate home health caregiver, or the maintenance staff in my apartment building. Or a public school teacher.
I just read The Bling Ring, by Nancy Jo Sales. I'm in no mood to hear that nonsense.
(The Bling Ring is a very good work of investigative journalism. I'd like to have Matt Taibbi review it. In fact, maybe it ought to be assigned reading in high schools.)
Not "their" society, just society. There are 7 billion people, I will never meet the overwhelming majority of them, they will never meet me. To me, they're all just cogs in the machine, as I am to them. On average, those who are contributing more to the standard of living that both of us enjoy are paid more than those who don't. Yes, there are always exceptions. I'm sure your maintenance man is a lovely person, but a particle physicist could do everything that he does. The reverse is probably not true. Only one can substitute for the other, those with more substitutions available *generally* choose to maximize earnings, which involves taking a position where they provide benefit to more people.
Those commodity traders you seem to scoff at are the only reason your venerated public teachers can collect the pensions they do, as in many, if not all, states the unions negotiated based on potential market returns (and rely on taxpayers to pick up the difference if projections aren't met).