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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:43PM   Printer-friendly
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.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:01AM (1 child)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:01AM (#532837) Journal

    Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, chapter XLII

    Philosophers acquire needs and interests unknown to uneducated men; above all, philosophers do not recant in the public forum the principles that they have upheld in private, and they acquire the habit of loving truth for itself. A good selection of such men constitutes the happiness of a nation, but that happiness will be temporary unless good laws augment their number so as to diminish the ever considerable risk of a poor choice.

    In this regard, several modern nation-states are in bad shape!

    And:

    But where there is no contract of service, those who give up something for the sake of the other party cannot (as we have said) be complained of (for that is the nature of the friendship of virtue), and the return to them must be made on the basis of their purpose (for it is purpose that is the characteristic thing in a friend and in virtue). And so too, it seems, should one make a return to those with whom one has studied philosophy; for their worth cannot be measured against money, and they can get no honour which will balance their services, but still it is perhaps enough, as it is with the gods and with one's parents, to give them what one can.

    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX:1

    And, oh, nothing for me, thank you. After a certain point, compensation seems just, um, kind of dirty.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @11:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @11:38AM (#532911)

    Ill take your share then, since you dont want it.