[spaced-out]

>forgetting about the people building your stuff, growing your food, extracting your oil (and killing the planet in the process), moving your stuff around, nursing people, building your house, installing your AC, shipping your amazon packages,

What do you mean "forgetting"? I pay those people for their services out of the money I earn. They're not doing all those things out of the goodness of their hearts, they working for the same reason I'm working, for a paycheck.

>and all the other ultra-necessary jobs (that are usually underpaid)

Their pay, just like my pay, is set by the market. If you don't think that's fair, your issue is with capitalism. I'm actually open to the idea of moving away from capitalism, but very few people, especially in the US, are, and I have no expectation that will change in my lifetime.

[hurryskurry]

I would say, to be pedantic, that your pay isn't set by the market "really," because of market distortions of all kinds.

Like doctors are highly paid for a number of reasons one of which is cause the APA restricts the number of doctors that can be trained, but also because of the nature of the finance of healthcare in America, and the cost of training doctors. None of those is determined purely based on the market really.

[spaced-out]

A distorted market is still a market. Considering there has never in history been a market completely free of distortion due to authority figures, I don't see the distinction you're making.

[thatfrenchguy]

By forgetting I meant forgetting their contribution to society (and the value they create).

There is a lot to say about pay to show that wages are not a real market as well :-)

[spaced-out]

A distorted market is still a market. Considering there has never in history been a market completely free of distortion due to authority figures, I don't see the distinction you're making.

[agent008t]

> Their pay, just like my pay, is set by the market. If you don't think that's fair, your issue is with capitalism. I'm actually open to the idea of moving away from capitalism, but very few people, especially in the US, are, and I have no expectation that will change in my lifetime.

No, the pay of people that you pay is set by you, not by capitalism. If you think some people that provide you services deserve more pay, what is stopping you from paying them extra?

[spaced-out]

That is a good point, however, I generally don't know what percent of what I'm paying is going to the employee who's providing the service to me, so I usually can't make that determination.