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from the are-you-a-net-gain-or-a-net-drain? dept.
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: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @02:59AM (4 children)
Politicians might actually need to be paid more
No. When you look at the 5-star healthcare plan they get while deciding on a fuck-you plan for everybody else, it could easily be said that they're already paid too much for delivering bad results.
it might help a little with corruption
Y'know what would help a lot?
Prosecutors[1] doing their jobs and enforcing the Emoluments Clause[2] in the Constitution that says NO PUBLIC OFFICIAL can accept anything that even smells like a bribe.
Now, clearly, "campaign contributions" have been given a waiver.
The way to fix that is publicly-funded election campaigns.
they take on a hell of a lot of responsibility
...and get to bask in the glory when they handle it right.
Spike Lee/Ozzie Davis summarized it pretty well: "Always do the right thing."
Another way to say it is "Do the most good for the greatest number of people."
[1] There's another that's overpaid for the results they get WRT justice.
[2] That's actually "Emoluments Clauses"; it's important enough that they put it in there TWICE.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @03:52AM
Fortunately, they stacked the court with incompetent jurists that will find whatever ruling they're looking for. Just look at what the likes of Thomas and Scalia ruled over their tenure on the court. I don't think we've ever had jurists on the bench that were that lacking in competence. Hell, Thomas couldn't even be bothered to ask questions for years on end while in session. They regularly ignored precedence and the constitution when inconvenient.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:42AM (1 child)
That's small thinking. We pay the people who decide on trillion dollars budgets a shlub salary of 180k. Then you wonder why they don't put the people's interest first. Pay them like big company CEOs. That is their level of responsibility.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:31AM
Yup, the current model means only millionaires get represented in the legislature.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:29PM
And how will you qualify for public funding? What's to prevent someone from turning that into a business model?