Inequality Illustrated

[ttwtt78640]

Yes, but is 20 seconds of being a hedge fund manager more valuable than 8 hours of brain surgery? Or is two hours of simply being a Hilton daughter doing nothing more valuable than 8 hours of brain surgery?

Good points. With these professions there is certainly something other than market forces involved, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Joe Steel]

if you insist that the observation of animal behavior is a well-accepted technique for studying human psychology

I've got an experiment for you. you have two monkeys in a cage side by side. one monkey has to pull lever down over and over again for an hour to get a piece of food. the other monkey doesn't pull his level down but still gets his food. do you think the monkey that has to pull the lever down to get his food will continue to do so when he finds out he can get his for free also

I think you posted your suggestion once before and I have to admit it stopped me cold. It seemed to prove relief systems are doomed to failure.

Then I realized, to make it fair, the monkeys couldn't get the same food or the same quantity of food. Human relief systems, especially in the US, don't treat beneficiaries well. They don't get the same things workers get. Would you be willing to consider your experiment if the "working" monkey got five grapes but the non-working monkey got only one grape or a piece of cucumber? What do you think would happen?

 

[Joe Steel]

When I found myself unemployed from work that had never paid me more than 25K a year I went into business
for myself doing the same exact work in the first year I made 50K and by the 8th year my income exceeded 130K

If you are a monkey wage slave no one cares if you fling poo, just show up and do what you are supposed to do
add to the company's bottom line. You will be compensated only based on your contribution to the bottom line.

I don't think that's so. Compensation reflects labor market rates. Regardless of the level of contribution, wages will be no better than the market demands they be.

 

[trfjr]

I think you posted your suggestion once before and I have to admit it stopped me cold. It seemed to prove relief systems are doomed to failure.

Then I realized, to make it fair, the monkeys couldn't get the same food or the same quantity of food. Human relief systems, especially in the US, don't treat beneficiaries well. They don't get the same things workers get. Would you be willing to consider your experiment if the "working" monkey got five grapes but the non-working monkey got only one grape or a piece of cucumber? What do you think would happen?

you give the monkey that pulled the level down 5 grapes then you reach in to cage and take two away and give it to the monkey who didn't pull the lever down. if you try that again next time the monkey pulls the lever down you are liable to get bit

 

[trfjr]

I don't think that's so. Compensation reflects labor market rates. Regardless of the level of contribution, wages will be no better than the market demands they be.

Only if the explorer wants to keep his employees. a work force is no different than a product. the better the product (employee) the more the consumer (employer) will pay for that product

 

[AngryOldGuy]

wages will be no better than the market demands they be.

Granted I was one of a very few entities in the entire city that was providing that service and due to my low overhead could provide it under the market rate and still maintain a 40% gross profit margin.

There is something to what you say, in a market flooded with qualified brain surgeons, that simultaneously sees decreased demand for their services due to external factors driving down the number of procedures being performed or an influx of millions of illegals aliens willing to work under the table at low skilled jobs or the offshoring of virtually entire industries...

I apologize I thought this was about two dudes doing equal work and receiving unequal compensation?
Unequal production deserves unequal pay, if I can sell what you produce for a profit then I have a vested interest in retaining your services
if I lose you to a competitor who offers better pay I lose. Hiring another less skilled worker at lower pay may indeed not be as profitable.

 

[Excon]

What else would it be?

Not getting what he wants?
Not getting what is available?

But seeing inequality? Not!

 

[imagep]

I don't think that's so. Compensation reflects labor market rates. Regardless of the level of contribution, wages will be no better than the market demands they be.

Compensation reflects negotiating power. Those with a lot of it (celebrities, the uber rich, criminals, etc) have a lot of it and can thus negotiate higher incomes than the rest of us, regardless of skill level or actual personal productivity.

If a celebrity applied for a job as a salesperson or CSR with my company, I would offer them more money than a non-celebrity, not because I thought that they were a good worker or higher skilled, but because I know that people would tend to come to my business just to be able to meet a celebrity.

 

[Joe Steel]

you give the monkey that pulled the level down 5 grapes then you reach in to cage and take two away and give it to the monkey who didn't pull the lever down. if you try that again next time the monkey pulls the lever down you are liable to get bit

That's an interesting idea. I wonder if anyone ever has tried it.

 

[Mach]

Cute video. Using academics as political propaganda is certainly associated with liberals. They repeated it to get a stronger effect...for the audience. Of course anyone with children knows this without high paid elite academics running tests with monkeys...even after results are established.

It's not at all what's associated with wall street however, nor income inequality. Fair labor standards act is more in-line with this sort of "fairness" in that two people performing the same job for the same company should likely be paid very close to the same, or that there is some non-discriminatory track for either to earn what the other earns through years of service or merit, etc. Those have some basis in this sort of fairness/equality, where stereotypes, bias, habit, etc., may color someone's pay decisions rather than being more fair on merit.

I would think anyone who wants to really bust ass with math/finance, polish their persona so they can hob-knob with the wall street elites, and work the insane and stressful hours from the bottom of wall street and work their way up....has that option. Working at Wal-Mart...not really the same task is it? I certainly couldn't do it. I'd rather work at Wal Mart than try to work on Wall street personally, if given the option. Wall Streets issue is finance is incentivized, and regulated less than it likely should be, so it's a free for all to a degree. But it's not as easy as handing someone a rock to earn a grape...

They should have two tasks, a mundane task like the rock, and a harder task that the monkeys naturally do not want to do...a small shock or some negative stimulus when they do it. And then do equal pay, and then do unequal pay both better reward for harder task, then reversed. That might be interesting. Markets are far more sophisticated in reality of course...you often are able to match people who love A with job A, and people who love B with job B, and neither would be willing to do the others job for that pay. So it's net happier.

We're definitely a lot like animals, I value such research but I'd prefer to see more sophisticated research in this day and age, and certainly some with more robust outcomes than political propaganda.

 

[AngryOldGuy]

We're definitely a lot like animals,

but the ability to think is what separates us from them.
Sadly today most people either never learned to think or spend their entire lives running away from having too?

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford