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: 2) by Kilo110 on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:35PM (1 child)
The textbook definition of finance is connecting those with capital to those that need capital. So every dollar taken by the finance industry is one less available to those that will create companies/products/jobs etc.
They do work so they deserve some compensation. But the current finance industry is a bloated parasite sucking up way too much and giving back very little.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:47PM
You are completely ignoring the value of the connection. Why have grocery stores and restaurants? All they do is take money away from people who need food.