What we are getting paid for what we do displays in a very crude way what we are worth to society. Crude in the sense that it’s a very one dimensional measurement, but still relevant, since most of our society consists of corporations and their task, in turn, is to maximize the value for their owners.
Of course that means that what you get paid is the lower than the value you contribue, or at least it should be. That is how corporations make money. By paying you less than the value you contribute. If you include all secondary costs that you incur, then the difference between your contribution and your cost is what you bring in as profit for the company. The larger that difference, the more valuable you should be to the company, regardless of how much you are paid.
Of course, the public sector doesn’t try to make profit. They try to provide services for the public in an as efficient manner as possible. As salaried in the private sector go up, keeping good people working in the public sector is getting increasingly difficult. The people have to have other drivers than only salary. Sense of service or status might be some.
However, I sometimes wonder about the priorities that society shows by pay disparities. Is Judge Judy doing a job that is worth 100 time what Justice Scalia does? A US Supreme Court Justice is paid around $200,000 per year. Judge Judy gets around $20,000,000. Along the same lines, are the efforts of Rush Limbaugh worth more than 100 times than the efforts of the President of the USA? The president gets approximately $400,000 per year. Mr. Limbaugh earns about $50,000,000 per year.
I could bring up a lot of other misalignments in reward versus value, even if you look solely at the private sector. But I think it’s worth to keep in mind that the average family income in the USA is in the region of $50,000. That is for a family, not for a person. That means that the effort of 1,000 families is valued at the same level as Mr. Limbaugh.
I believe that if nothing is done about the income disparity, the country of USA will slide into a more and more dire financial situation. Let me know what you think.
