No. To bring financial wage equity to
relative time (that was) spent in a classroom seat.
Quickly, this is to what I refer:
-->Raising the minimum wage to about $21 per hour does so.
-->Lowering the wages of professionals to about 1/4 (IIRC) of what they were in 1993 does so.
-->Graduating from high school at about halfway through the 5th grade also does so.
(based upon 1993 data and assumes about 75% of people lack college degrees. I'm going from memory, so the figures may be slightly or somewhat off, but anyone can calculate them, formula is average pay of class group divided by number of years typically spent in education.
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p70-51/table02.txt )
A different way of stating the problem: Since a dentist has about 166% (5/3) more educational time invested,
their increased earning capacity should be about 166% of earnings as measured against those of high-school learning level, instead of 400% that they did earn on average in 1993.
Any single one of the above ("-->" bullets) makes our current system of specialized education much more equitable for all citizens, and it eliminates the inequities of a capitalistic financial system that parasitizes the least educated member of society
for their entire lives including their school years. A combination approach of the three above attenuates the suggested figures toward their current figures. My taking the middle one of the three above simply was using one of them.
Would you have objected less strenuously had I chosen the first one instead? My view is they are closely interrelated; practically identical; mirror images of the same phenomenon of (L)earning inequity.
"Bullshit, if you are sick and present to an emergency room you will be treated."
How much a typical citizen will owe corporate for such treatment, you don't say. Further, an emergency room visit is not primary care. It is not whether you will be treated for a health emergency, but how much one goes into debt as a result, and whether that debt lands you, ultimately, considering the new bankruptcy laws, in some kind of "kinder and gentler" debtor prison. I'm stating health care today is about the masses of citizens being financially preyed upon to an extreme and unreasonable degree given the masses average income and the relative number of years spent in education.
"just common sense"
Regarding your word choice of "common": others may consider another word that's less self-complimentary. Some others in this "home surgery" thread, and in some of the other threads that were locked, seem to have a different "common sense" regarding health treatments than your view.
How does promoting the agenda of doctors help progressive democrats when about 75% of the American Medical Association's contributions have been to Republicans, a ratio that so far is holding for the 2006 cycle, according to
opensecrets.org? Currently, more of your money paid in doctors' fees is recycled to the republican machine. (I'm sure there are some democrat doctors that aren't AMA members, where's that list?)
"Competition? Airline pilots have a monopoly, so do nuclear scientists. Dammit, I want to fly and fiddle with nuclear reactors, lets band together and break the evil monopoly."
One way I like to think of these things is how they might impact others. Self-surgery by non-professionals? Likely none or little impact to other parties. Running a nuclear facility? Seems like a lot of others in the surrounding community might be impacted if someone there is incompetent and there's an emergency. So too, an airliner being flown by someone unqualified. If it's a small plane and is empty of passengers, there's still the danger the plane might crash and kill others on the ground. These objections don't seem to apply for self-surgery, effects would seem limited to the individual making any such decision.
Also, where does one draw the line? Is needling a splinter out of a finger self-surgery like a poster below asks? How about cutting a mildly ingrown toenail that's weeping pus? What if one's in the middle of the ocean, sailing around the world alone, the radio has been damaged, and acute appendicitis presents? (I know it's extreme, but was reported on TV to have happened once and resulted in a successful self-apendectomy)
One curious thing about our current civilization, society, or social-political-economic system, is how we are being protected
from ourselves by those who claim to have our best interests in mind, but those same entities simultaneously profit from a sales pitch of what is essentially dependence upon a "professional" class who preys on us financially at every turn. I believe we can thank the corporatists for driving the wedge.
Those entities seem to directly impact other individuals' "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness" clauses of the Declaration of Independence partly through a matured religion of consumerism.
Keeping non-scheduled drugs on the Rx prescription list is just another financial boon that serves to keep citizens dependent upon doctors. Spend <10 minutes, write a script, tell patient, "call me if you don't feel better in a few days," charge patient a C-note (insurance companies and subscribers get a significant discount on the charge). Another creative term for that is highway robbery when the patient is lucky to have a job and to be earning minimum wage! (wage disparities are inherently relative)
Codifying a living wage goes a long way towards attenuating the pay-disparity issue, and so too would a free college education to remove the college-loan payback rationale for relatively high professional pay which may have a convergence effect on future wage disparity and creep. But so too does limiting the pay of professionals (especially including CEOs) preying on average Joe/Jane.
:hi: