Lawyers are a bad example as they don't run on profit based accounting, typically. More of a fee for service arrangement. There do exist some lawyers with for-profit side businesses, or solely work for a for-profit business, but they're probably outnumbered by law firms + sole proprietor service provider + employed by non-profits + employed by .gov
There is no obvious reason other than tradition and cultural goals that a lawyer has to be paid $200/hr instead of $20/hr, ditto no reason a postdoc biomedical researcher has to be paid $30K/yr instead of $300K/yr. The supply of STEM grads is too high leading to low pay and the supply of lawyers is too low leading to high pay, but if you can convince the kids to select different majors, go ahead.
We live in a central govt controlled economy. If you have control of the government, which we probably don't, then you can also select the priorities.
It also has the assumption that profit is the only reason why people work. Simple salary arrangements work pretty well for most people, as does contract work. Some other ways people make money without profit include prizes (Nobel, etc) and being cultural heros (pro sports athletes, unfortunately definitely not biomedical research scientists)
Finally some people just love the subject area and will voluntarily starve their family, look at any STEM other than CS/IT/high level applied medical (aka hospital dr cardiologist etc). I would not bet on it, or demand that only people taking a vow of poverty are "real" scientists or whatever. But there always will be some nuts willing to eat Ramen every night for the rest of their lives.
>There is no obvious reason other than tradition and cultural goals that a lawyer has to be paid $200/hr instead of $20/hr, ditto no reason a postdoc biomedical researcher has to be paid $30K/yr instead of $300K/yr.
The average lawyer doesn't make $200/hr. You can't compare your average biomedical postdoc to the top law school graduates. A biomedical postdoc is sacrificing pay now because he probably hopes to get a job as a tenured professor some day. It's something like clerking for a judge after law school.
Another thing, law students pay for law school, many of them rack up $150k in debt before they even start working. Most STEM PhD candidates are being paid while going to grad school.
>The supply of STEM grads is too high leading to low pay and the supply of lawyers is too low leading to high pay, but if you can convince the kids to select different majors, go ahead.
There are far too many law school graduates each year for the amount of lawyers demanded. Unless you can get into a good school and graduate near the top, law school is probably a bad idea. While the prospects for most STEM degrees look much better than other majors.
Sorry, but law firms operate for-profit. Partners are the owners of those firms and don't give away their profits to charities at the end of every fiscal year. This is quite a ludicrous assertion. Several partners at top law firms pocket several million a year outside of their client fees. For many lawyers from top schools, making partner is the ultimate goal because of the potential windfall.
There is no obvious reason other than tradition and cultural goals that a lawyer has to be paid $200/hr instead of $20/hr, ditto no reason a postdoc biomedical researcher has to be paid $30K/yr instead of $300K/yr. The supply of STEM grads is too high leading to low pay and the supply of lawyers is too low leading to high pay, but if you can convince the kids to select different majors, go ahead.
We live in a central govt controlled economy. If you have control of the government, which we probably don't, then you can also select the priorities.
It also has the assumption that profit is the only reason why people work. Simple salary arrangements work pretty well for most people, as does contract work. Some other ways people make money without profit include prizes (Nobel, etc) and being cultural heros (pro sports athletes, unfortunately definitely not biomedical research scientists)
Finally some people just love the subject area and will voluntarily starve their family, look at any STEM other than CS/IT/high level applied medical (aka hospital dr cardiologist etc). I would not bet on it, or demand that only people taking a vow of poverty are "real" scientists or whatever. But there always will be some nuts willing to eat Ramen every night for the rest of their lives.