Tim Daneliuk wrote in
:

You're missing the point. Unless force it brought to bear to MAKE you
take a job, you're always "paid what you're worth" because you are
"worth" what the market will bear. If a job is offered at a price,
it is because the buyer (employer) values the work more than the money
they pay for it. If the seller (you) accepts the job, then you value
the money more highly than you do your time to do the work. Everyone
wins. You may not be making as much as you would LIKE or THINK you
should get, but that doesn't make you "worth" it. Again, this is
true as long as no one is pointing a gun at your head.

That is fine in a really free market. I was glad that my boss always
valued my work and could convince his bosses of it (I was indeed
convinced). On the other hand, I was taken into the office of the
division head once and told that it was better to take a 30% cut now that
portion of the grants had run out. I did, and within a year had managed
to get another grant. I am not sure whether I could have insisted that
my salary should remain the same, and that departmental funds should
cover the shortfall (I heard that might have been the "law"). I was too
afraid of not getting institutional support for my next grant
application, which would have been it for my career.

So a free market may exist for some professions. I am wondering how free
the market is in actual fact. It isn't for many "trades" that limit to
union members. Obviously for people in sales of high-faluting medical
equipment there was a recent collapse as another poster indicated. The
really good salaries in the pharmaceutical industry are likely also a
thing of the past. We have had really big discussions, sometimes of
varying degrees of politeness, whether teachers are paid as deserved, too
little or grossly too much.

Until there is at least a 5% surplus in each profession for an extended
period of time, it is unlikely that a truly free market develops. The 5%
figure is taken from what I heard was a healthy vacancy rate for rental
housing - neither too much nor too little. Obviously for "protected"
professions such as department heads at universities, unionized jobs and
others, the extended period of time might be very long. Also, when
companies pay their CEOs more than they pay in taxes, something is amiss,
I think. Of course someone could make a case, perhaps ...

--
Best regards
Han
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