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: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday June 29 2017, @02:00AM (3 children)
An alternative? How about 1/3 of the DA's budget goes to public defenders. As it is the DA has no skin in the game, they have a fixed (unlimited to you and me) budget, force them to pay for your defense.
It's absurd the average American has to take a second mortgage on their house to defend themselves, guilty or not. And, it found not guilty, they still have to pay off that second mortgage.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @03:34AM
With dozens and dozens of women claiming that he victimized all of them in similar ways, Bill Cosby isn't the best example.
I would have used a whistleblower who got screwed by O'Bummer and his "transparency in gov't" bullshit as the example.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:50AM (1 child)
You do know who the public defenders are, right? There are three classes:
- Freshly minted attorneys, who don't yet have a client base or reputation. They may be good or bad, but they are certainly inexperienced.
- Incompetent attorneys who cannot make a living any other way.
- Good attorneys who do some public defense because it's the right thing to do. This is a very small group.
So, sure, you can probably insist on a public defender (although, iirc, the court can decide that you are too rich, and aren't entitled to one until you've bankrupted yourself). But the quality of representation you will get is likely to be poor.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday June 29 2017, @09:45AM
sudo mod me up