Stink Bombs In Our Midst
A couple of nights ago I was watching the NBC nightly news. They had two stories, one right after the other, that were rather instructive. The first was about the growing shortage of primary care doctors in this country and the rush of medical students to train to become medical specialists. This report noted that average pay of primary care docs is $190,000 a year. Average pay for radiologists is $490,000 a year. And the top paying specialists, spinal surgeons, make $611,000 a year on average.
That sounded like pretty good money, even for the “bottom end” of medical practitioners. That is, until the next story on this same news broadcast. It was about Goldman Sachs. It seems the average compensation this year for folks working there was reported to be better than $900,000.
Of course, there never was, never will be, and probably never should be, a direct link between pay and how much good one class of worker provides to society. As an habitual lottery ticket buyer who would be more than happy to soak up a fortune for no work at all, I naturally support this reality. And yet…
While a class of society that improves the workings of society should not necessary be more greatly compensated than others, a class of society that almost wrecked that society does not seem like a group that should be waxing richer and richer while most everyone else is slowly sinking into harder times, or has already sunk there.
The Wall Street crowd that puffed up a bubble so it could get egregiously rich, was then bailed out by the government (us), seems to be getting even richer today puffing up a new bubble that seems related hardly at all to anything resembling a real, broad-based economic recovery.
I remember an incident many years ago. I was a kid playing with other kids in a neighborhood park. We were so intent on our game we didn’t notice another kid, a stranger to the neighborhood, sneak up and throw a stink bomb into our midst.
When we managed to recover our wits we saw this nasty kid and tried to chase him down. But he was already in the back seat of a car, his parent’s car maybe, and driving away. And he was laughing at his helpless pursuers.
That’s how I feel about recent reports about compensation at Goldman Sachs and other big name financial firms. I feel like these people are laughing at the likes of me. And that they know there is nothing, absolutely nothing, anybody can do that will keep them from profiting, one way or another, no matter what else is happening in the rest of society.
9 Responses to “Stink Bombs In Our Midst”
Never mind the class envy that outdoes legitimate concerns about excess and about misconduct once again. [sigh] A better use of one's time is to ponder what happens when federal government health care is provide to all, or to many more, and with payment (the basis for dishonesty among advocates of government health care so often) comes control, and the Feds start deciding who will go into which specialty or into general care (and where they will practice in the USA), as well as what income they get?
If a doctor was as valuable to society as a bond trader, they would make as much money. That is the way of the world.
So, that was you way back when. My chauffeur and I laughed our heads off after that.
While a class of society that improves the workings of society should not necessary be more greatly compensated than others, a class of society that almost wrecked that society does not seem like a group that should be waxing richer and richer while most everyone else is slowly sinking into harder times, or has already sunk there. ~ MS
Nailed it! If not for the working class, meaning people who actually contribute something worthwhile to society, the parasites on Wall St. wouldn't have a prayer, much less an infrastructure in which to work. Only a fool would try to portray this irony as “class envy”.
The primary care numbers are a little skewed since it includes OB/GYNs who tend to make more since they do more procedures. Here is the breakdown, FPs and internists are around 160K:
http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/mema…
“If a doctor was as valuable to society as a bond trader, they would make as much money. That is the way of the world.”
That is the truth of it folks. Worker class salaries are based on how society values those workers. Looking at these numbers is like looking at a mirror. This is who we are.
“That is the truth of it folks. Worker class salaries are based on how society values those workers.”
It goes farther than that. With the progress of transport and of development elsewhere in the world, anything that can be easily or practically done in the Third World as well as here will effectively command Third Wages somewhere, or be done somewhere else. And that was explicitly stated among the books I own by a self-professed yellow-dog Democrat (actually quoting people like Robert Reich and Lester Thurow to describe economic trends as of the 1990s). While the resentful can insult those of us who know better than they, or engage in other illogical behavior, more reasoned minds and individuals will first see the issues and problems that truly exist, and draw logical inferences and conclusions, or report the facts, instead.
“The primary care numbers [...]“
Note that the Clinton scandal included intentions (threats) to influence and change (i.e., control and revise at will) the distribution of GPs versus specialists, and I still speculate aloud what may be done by any new government health care initiative that purports to approach the problems of lack of GPs, lack of doctors in underserved areas, and disparity of incomes of GPs, etc., versus some (many) specialists.
A relevent subject also in the news because of Washington's interventionism (intrusion and worse) is the case of global-warming-idiocy-driven intentions by Washington to develop a “cap and trade” system for controlling power plant (and other stationary-large-source, no doubt) emissions, which is a quota system with trading and lucrative opportunities for middlemen and for meddling by government, rather than being honest and non-cowardly, and imposing a fuel tax to combat emissions from combustion directly. Such a “cap and trade” system could be imitated by any system that would allocate and apportion various kinds of doctors (and residency and future-practice positions, or quotas of these) on, say, a regional basis. Not only would quotas be possible on different types of future (and present) doctors in an area, but also where they would be practiced. (A regional approach rather than at the state level seems likelier.)
” Goldman Sachs and other big name financial firms. I feel like these people are laughing at the likes of me”
They and their friends and abettors in the Obama Administration, if you're honest and complete in scope.
Capitalism is a shell game of manipulation, a form of legal corruption. Capitalism should have strict laws imposed to protect the innocent and gullible. Free Enterprise is mere rhetoric for legalized theft. I much prefer some European Social capitalism systems over the oppressive American (U.S.) heartless and evil system. Especially since at least five other nations have a higher standard of living than the United States. It is good to know that the U.S. is closer to Social Capitalism than ever before.