Paradox of the Paycheck

Have you ever wondered how the salary for different professions is decided? Why is it the way it is and more importantly who gets to decide? Why is it that an actor or a banker gets paid far more than say someone who who works as a social worker or a teacher?

If you think about it rationally for a second, you may come to the same conclusion that I did...that the wage distribution system has some serious flaws, regardless of which part of the world you happen to be in. I have always wondered why someone who plays an instrumental role in educating children or who contributes significantly to helping the downtrodden and the underprivileged in the society paid far less than someone who perhaps appears on a trashy reality TV show and basically does nothing valuable in terms of constructive development.

My history professor for a human rights class that I took while in college, asked the class to rank professions in a descending order of what they deserve to be paid. I remember that majority of the class agreed that teachers and doctors should be paid the maximum, followed by scientists and engineers. Apart from doctors, which is one profession that probably is paid closest to what it deserves (although some might disagree, since you can debate about the difference in the income for different specialties), most other professional fields are severely underpaid.

And while most students thought that a teaching job should pay as well as an engineering or science related job does, no one thought about the non-profit sector and certainly not about a factory worker. Why should they be paid less than other professions? This brings in the question of whether one should be paid depending on one's skill or depending on the amount of physical labor that one's job entails, therefore in the essence, its skilled labor vs unskilled labor.

Many would claim that skilled labor should definitely be given more importance, that is the reason after all why people go to college or graduate schools and it provides them with something special that others lack. However, that seems absurd because everyone could gain that something special, if only they could afford to go to college in the first place. It is not that they lack the skills that others have, rather the society is structured in such a way that only a few can afford to learn those special skills. More over, do you really think that working at a factory does not require you to have any skills at all? And even if you decide that skilled labor should be paid more, how do you decide which skills deserve a bigger paycheck? The prestige associated with these skills? skills that you stay longer in school for in order to acquire them or skills that simply require more intelligence and brains?

Its hard to answer these questions without taking into account various other social and economic factors, but it sure is interesting to think and be aware about what is the real significance and value of something that is so dear to us...our paycheck of course!