[yitchelle]

I had a similar conversation with my wife the other day. Before the kids, she was an elderly care attendant, providing care for the elderly folks who are in their sunset years of their lives, and I worked in tech. Although my salary is not high, it is still about 5x of hers. I feel rather embarrass during my discussion as I feel that she is contributing a lot more to people lives than I am, the essential services. The stuff that I make would not make much difference in everyday life if it did not exists.

She is much more valuable to society than I am.

edit: grammar

[lujim]

I wouldn't feel too guilty about "value". In a world of finite resources with alternative uses, your value (how much you are paid) is often your share of how much revenue you help generate. Value (pay) and value (worth) are not the same thing. Why does a pro athlete make 10 mil and a 3rd grade teacher make 30k? Because more tangible revenue is generated by a single pro athlete than a single 3rd grade teacher in a given year. It sucks, but hating it or feeling guilty about it doesn't change it.

[existencebox]

That may have a component to unequal pay, but I think trying to paint it as the whole picture (or even the major part) isn't quite fair.

I'd argue the huge pay differentials are often because humans are TERRIBLE at judging long term... anything. A pro athlete can fill a stadium at some $$ per seat, yes. If a pro athlete stops playing, what happens? the stadium stops filling as much, we potentially lose some ancillary jobs from decreased viewing population (but given the number of sports stars and the nature of teams, losing one outside of a very few likely won't cause much), but in the long term, what is the cost?

Now let's remove an equal number of teachers as could be paid with that single salary. Even if this is a low end athlete, given teacher pay, you're losing dozen/few dozen teachers. What is the long term cost to students who can no longer be educated, or get a much poorer education (or simply now have far bigger classes)?

I realize there are many holes in this argument as it asserts a lot about how money is distrbuted/what externalities exist, but I see it as one facet.

There are also the more well explored aspects of "we like to lionize celebrity/success" and "teachers don't have much political or social clout given their resources/our prioritization in society" (although this links back to my prior statements about long term value and society preferences.)

In summary, I think there's plenty of reason to hate/feel guilt about it, and work to change it. Yes, the feelings alone do nothing, but if no one is getting angry then certainly nothing will ever change.

[lujim]

I 100% agree. People are terrible at judging long term non tangible value. That's mainly because it's hard to quantify on a balance sheet. That's why I put the 1 pro athlete vs 1 teacher for 1 year stipulation on it.

[jazzyk]

Yes. It is the 'scalability' factor.

A star performer's pay is possible because millions of people can enjoy his/her performance at the same time, paying a relatively small amount of money (say, $80/ticket).

The software that the poster above developed can potentially be sold to a lot of customers with no extra work, so he makes an above average salary.

A teacher cannot teach millions of people at the same time, the limit is usually set at 20-25 students.

A care-provider can only take care of one person at a time, a few during the day.

[JoeAltmaier]

I hesitate to disagree. But ... the value of services can be easily calculated because they are so visible. Every interaction has an emotional link, and we count that highly.

The value to 'society' of improving a toaster by a small percentage, or the hits to a website by a larger one, are hard to calculate except by a bottom line. Any emotional impact is so indirect as to be invisible. Still exist; but we don't see them so can't count them.

Add to this: one-on-one services are limited by the time and attention one person can put into them - two hands, one heart, 24 hours in a day. Absolutely no leverage at all, in the economic sense. Exceeding that (admittedly large and important) impact happens at some point in less-direct exchanges (economic, technological) and can go up from there geometrically.

So I console myself, as a technician, that what I do affects those unseen people. And if successful, it affects millions, not just tens. It adds up to something important too.

[shalmanese]

Yeah, but this is just the classic Diamond-Water Paradox in Economics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value). Value isn't assigned based on essentiality, it's based on the intersection of supply and demand.

[dragonwriter]

> She is much more valuable to society than I am.

Perhaps, but a natural effect of the way that capitalist economies work is that contributions aren't valued by social utility in a fair sense, but by utility weighted by the wealth of the people to whom that utility is provided.