Many jobs have spillover effects on the rest of society. For instance, the value of new treatments discovered by biomedical researchers is far greater than what they or their employers get paid, so they have positive spillovers. Other jobs have negative spillovers, such as those that generate pollution.
A forthcoming paper, by economists at UPenn and Yale,1 reports a survey of the economic literature on these spillover benefits for the 11 highest-earning professions.
There's very little literature, so all these estimates are very, very uncertain, and should be not be taken literally. But it's interesting reading.
Here are the bottom lines – see more detail on the estimates below. (Note that we already discussed an older version of this paper, but the estimates have been updated since then.)
(Emphasis in original retained.)
At the top, researchers who generate +$950,440 in positive externalities; at the bottom, financiers who generate -$104,000 in negative externalities. In a glaring omission, telephone sanitisers were not listed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @01:00AM (6 children)
Good managers are worth a lot, bad ones worth negative amounts.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 29 2017, @02:14AM (5 children)
The problem is that, by and large, the bad ones are getting huge paychecks. Just look at Carly Fiorina, Marissa Meyer, Bob Nardelli, etc. They ran their companies into the ground and got enormous compensation packages out of the deal. This even works for middle managers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @03:56AM (1 child)
Nardelli? I had to double check that he was who I think he was. He increased the value of Home Depot by billions while he was leading the company. Granted, the stores were understaffed, but including his name with those other incompetent hacks is rather ridiculous.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 29 2017, @03:24PM
Everything I read about him at the time trashed him, saying he took enormous amounts of money out of the company for his personal compensation, while ruining the store's reputation among customers by replacing knowledgeable staff with an insufficient number of idiot know-nothing teenagers. He was even rated as one of the worst American CEOs of all time [cnbc.com]. According to his Wikipedia article, "he dramatically overhauled the company and replaced its entrepreneurial culture of innovative product design with one focused on relentless cost-cutting." Further, "His stint is widely noted to be the most "repulsive" in the history of Home Depot. Nardelli's toxic actions served to kill an enduring company culture and turned Home Depot into a laggard." My first link says of him, "Nardelli was fired from Home Depot after losing market share, alienating executives, downplaying customer service, and refusing to cut his fat pay package. ". His does "losing market share" equate to increasing the value by billions? And why on earth would he be fired if he was doing such a great job? Are you sure you aren't confusing him with someone else? After HD, he took over Chrysler, took billions in government aid, and then went bankrupt. He sounds like a classic short-term profits over long-term success CEO to me. That's not something be proud of.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:00PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:40PM (1 child)
I have a bit of a problem with your idea of tarring and feathering these people and then kicking them off a cliff: I don't really see the point of the feathers if you're just going to kick them off a cliff. Seems like a waste of feathers.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Friday July 07 2017, @03:49PM
I do see your point in that it may soften the landing somewhat, or be instrumental in a form of rapid evolution enabling them to learn to fly before hitting the bottom. But tarring and feathering is so delightfully old-school, don't you think?