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> It's a simple matter of supply and demand. While you're right, physical labor is hard, it's something that doesn't tend to require anything other than a willingness to work. As such, there are quite a few people willing to do it. A highly specialized job that requires training and experience is going to pay more simply because there are less people around to do it.


Okay, suppose you have this company, call it Acme. The CEO of Acme gets paid $10 million dollars a year to do run his company. I say, if that man puts $10 million worth of effort into running the company, than he is entitled to it. But the chances are, there is some factory worker down at the bottom of the food chain, who works much harder than Mr. CEO, and gets paid minimum wage for it. If we started at the top, and worked our way down... then suppose Mr. CEO now gets $50,000 a year for his effort. That $9,950,000 remainder drops down to the next level (and probably gains a lot, since these Vice Presidents are just a bunch of suck-ups), and so on, and so on. The lower it drops down the ladder, the more people there are, the more ways it gets divided among the hard workers. Finally, it reaches that factory worker pumping out Acme Wigits at an amazing clip for dirt cheap. The factory worker gets a raise for his efforts... by now, it's not a big difference in pay, but since he didn't make that much to begin with, his pay just doubled. Mr. Lowly Factory Worker is much happier now, and his productivity even increases (which means even more money later on). Some of his co-workers will look up to him, and put more effort into their jobs to make more money. But not everybody will. Some will be envious of Mr. Worker, get fed up with the whole thing, and their productivity will drop (along with their pay). Money that would have gone to the lazies now goes to the hard workers, and a sort of natural selection takes place. Doesn't matter if this is your first job since you dropped out of high school, your pay will be related to the effort (not just the time) you put into it.

Now, I realize that there are a lot of problems with this scenario... like who's the CEO who's willing to give up nearly $10 million a year? What is Mr. Worker going to think when the CEO starts putting more effort into his job, resulting in less trickle-down money for Mr. Worker? (Personally, I still think this situation is better than what commonly happens today, where a CEO lays off 1,000 people and gets a $10 million raise). Judging effort is much easier to do the more physical the work is, where there are concrete, physical indications of what you've put into your work...but what about management? Somewhere, you'd end up putting a dollar figure on something insubstantial or esoteric, so you'd definitely have to have the help of some insurance company experienced in doing just that :-)

But if I were a CEO, I (hopefully) wouldn't think of the $10 million salary I was going to have to give up. I would (hopefully) realize that, if the responsibility for the company is all mine, then I am responsible for the poor conditions of the hard workers. I would realize that I'm paying Mr. VP $1,000,000 a year to kiss my.. er, well, I'd realize that he's not working $1,000,000 worth of work. Also, I'd realize that when it's time to make the cuts, the idea is to take off the fat and not the feet.

A company whose payment was partly based on effort will fare a lot better than one whose CEO can't see past his next fat paycheck.

Perhaps one way to realistically balance stuff out a bit more is to put a cap on what the raise % is from one level to the next. I think that's the way it is in Japan, it's like you can't earn more than 10% more than the people one level down. Here, you find jumps like 1000% at the top levels. That 10% could realistically account for the increase in responsibility that comes with the higher positions.




[snip]
>
> I'd also like to note that the richest man in the world (Bill G) was until recently working like 18-20 hour days. Whether or not I like the man or his company, there's not doubt that he worked like mad to get where he is.
>

I totally agree. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble and lose track of what my thoughts were, so I'll just wrap this message up here. BTW, thanks for all of your very thought-provoking input, Brunnen, Tranio, Mousie, Ticia, and Stephen! You guys brought up some excellent points I'm gonna hafta mull over for another few years.

'till then,
Eni"don't forget the 'g' in my name ;-)"gma