A black hole for our best and brightest

[applegrove]

A black hole for our best and brightest

Written by Jim Tankersley at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/16/a-black-hole-for-our-best-and-brightest/

SNIP.....................




Economic research suggests she was onto something. Wall Street is bigger and richer than ever, the research shows, and the economy and the middle class are worse off for it.



ABOUT THIS SERIES: The American middle class is floundering, and it has been for decades. The Post examines the mystery of what’s gone wrong and shows what the country must focus on to get the economy working for everyone again.


..............

It misses how much the economy has suffered at the hands of some of its most skilled, most talented workers, who followed escalating pay onto Wall Street — and away from more economically and socially valuable uses of their talents.

.............

In perhaps the starkest illustration, economists from Harvard University and the University of Chicago wrote in a recent paper that every dollar a worker earns in a research field spills over to make the economy $5 better off. Every dollar a similar worker earns in finance comes with a drain, making the economy 60 cents worse off.


.....................SNIP

[daredtowork]

1. Perhaps the key word is "compete"

As someone who was (unwillingly) benched for a long time, and who was at one point looking at spending the rest of my life on SSI, I ask this question: were humans meant to spend their entire lives spinning their wheels as fast as they can "competing" in a global market place?

Just looking that the frenetic, ultra-competitive tone of many job descriptions now is exhausting, physically and spiritually. The only point should be to make enough money to live comfortably - and perhaps fight a status war with your neighbors - and that's it. The competition shouldn't be infinite. This shouldn't be what your life is all about.

I think it became what our life was all about because of the "global" nature of it: the thought that some other country might "win" over us - perhaps causing our relative impoverishment or even deciding to use their economic "advantage" to invade us. There must be a way to extract ourselves from this constant sense of competition so we can focus on just making sure everyone is getting their needs met. Perhaps the US should retreat into a partial economic isolationism to allow us to rebuild our internal resources and see if we can "live off our own" for a while.

In any case I don't see the *requirement* of constantly hurling us at one another to compete, compete, compete. What if we don't want to compete? What if want to just be and use our talents for the greater good?

[marions ghost]

3. Extreme competition

is killing us.

Good post.

[randome]

6. And extreme population drives extreme competition.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font][hr]

[marions ghost]

7. true

but I don't think that's the main thing driving it at this point.

Americans are taught from the time they arrive on the planet to measure themselves against others, and to win at all costs.

[CanSocDem]

9. The marketplace conspires...

...with the bedrock institutions of health, education and the church in maintaining a competitive environment. A co-operative environment would be bad for business.



.

[JDPriestly]

2. K&R.

Fields like finance and law are way overpaid compared to the really productive people in our society like teachers and nurses and factory workers, farmers, and other laborers. It's OK that some are paid more or earn more, even quite a bit more than some others. But in our society people are not compensated for the social value of what they produce but rather for what they can grab or siphon off.

My grandson's day care teacher deserves more pay, but the parents who hire her cannot afford to pay her more because their pay is not high enough to cover the cost of this wonderful teacher. It's really sad.

Meanwhile, someone who siphons off money in a position on Wall Street -- creating nothing of much value -- earns so much.

It would be different if Wall Street really invested in creating jobs for willing workers to make things, produce products in our country, but those jobs are rare.

Wall Street is about skimming money from the top, not about creating real value in our society.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Important post... The title doesn't do it justice

to get the attention it needs.

[marions ghost]

8. Agree

the title is nebulous. I almost didn't read it.

[pampango]

5. Great post. "... every dollar a worker earns in a research field spills over to make the economy $5

better off. Every dollar a similar worker earns in finance comes with a drain, making the economy 60 cents worse off.

... from the end of World War II until the early 1980s, finance was just like any other desk job: The average Wall Street worker was paid about as much as the average worker in the private sector and was only slightly more educated.

But starting at about the time that Jackson joined Goldman, when Congress began tweaking investment-tax rates, Wall Street started drawing more educated workers. This made the average finance salary go up — from less than $50,000 a year in 1981 (which is about $100,000 in today’s dollars) to more than $350,000 a year in 2012."
The OP makes a lot of great points. Thanks for posting it, applegrove.