Ranting to /dev/null

"Comparable worth" my foot

Slate is running an article indicative of those who don't seem to have any idea how the real world works. We've got a New York writer taking cues from a professor of women's studies concluding that jobs that are determined to be of "comparable worth" by Johnny Q. Public should be provided with equal economic compensation. I've never heard a sillier idea in my life.

There is and should be only one indicator of a given job's salary: what people - particularly your employer - are willing to pay anyone to do that job. This is determined largely by how economically productive that job is, and how hard it is to get people, competent people, to do that job. Being a teacher is hard, essential work, but teaching does not produce wealth. It is supposed to produce well-rounded, responsible, mature human beings, but I think we'd all agree that the worth of people isn't measured in money. Flipping burgers does produce concrete wealth - not much, but something - but anyone can do it, and thus the pay is crap. Being a doctor is essential, important work that is generally regarded as being pretty fulfilling, but as there are precious few people in the country capable of becoming doctors and only a few of them decide to do so, society has to pay them enough to keep them interested. Hauling garbage is something almost anyone could do, but the work kind of sucks, and thus people need to be paid a little more than the sheer economic value of the labor in order to be willing to work. Any other measure for determining salaries is nothing less than the arbitrary imposition of a given person or persons' aesthetic values on the economic system. This is both unbridled arrogance and a recipe for disaster.