Sunday, January 15, 2012

nyt: who are top 1% in US? docs, lawyers. not engineers. http://nyti.ms/wZWGQX

jan 15th, 2012 CE

not even the much-reviled bankers?

so this is why the US is going to the dogs: non-productive people like lawyers make the most money. doctors are quasi-productive, but they end up making money for pharma, not really improving health -- while healthcare costs skyrocket, actual healthcare experienced in the US is pretty poor, and it shows in the obesity, health problems etc. but the doctors have formed a great cartel, and have managed to transfer a whole lot of public and private money to themselves. sort of like the OPEC cartel.

engineering is a low-status occupation in the US. well, it became so in britain, too, which is why you now have no industry worth the name in britain, which ironically started the industrial revolution.

3 comments:

non-carborundum said...

Damned lies and statistics..."Rectangles are sized according to the number of people in the top 1 percent", not how much that category owns of all wealth.

Also, to be precise it is not the friendly neighbourhood banker that is to be reviled but the "financial specialist".

Management analysts are no angels either.

One thing all including lawyers can agree upon is that more lawyers are no good for society.

But this envy thing will ultimately drag the US down and lay the groundwork for socialism. I do not think that the top 1% contains a majority of sociopathic scumbags. It is more likely a smaller percentage, say 0.01%. So this 1%, 99% business may actually be a ploy by that much smaller percentage to divert attention and divide and rule the population.

Pagan said...

Expect the trend to get worse as Wall St succeeds in gaining stranglehold of Tech sector and more and more Investment Bankers and Speculators grab executive positions in Silicon Valley.

Arvind said...

Doctors and lawyers make money by lobbying the government to erect barriers to entry to their professions. This is particularly so with doctors. That is why these two groups support the Democrats.

A lot of the stuff doctors study in their courses is absolute rubbish - Shakespeare and some humanities subjects.

A person needs to go through hoops and sitting in dull and boring classes (much of it repetitive but helps create a barrier) for as much as 15 years before he or she can be a surgeon. Then there is the fraud called "board certification."

The whole profession of law is fraudulent. Why should anyone have to hire someone else merely to petition the government or ask a third party (judge) to make a ruling?

As for investment bankers, the money is at the top management, most of whom are corrupt and the allies of both Republicans and Democrats. At the lower levels, there is no barrier of entry. This is true of engineering too. Engineers have not ganged up and created a barrier of entry with the aim of charging half a million dollars in pay per year.

They have left it to the market forces and that brings down the prices. Actually, removing regulations that protect doctors and leaving it to the market forces will bring down the price of healthcare in the US.