On 8/16/2012 3:31 PM, Bill wrote:
Mike Marlow wrote:
Bill wrote:
Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:56:44 +0000, Han wrote:

My point is that many
people in lower positions, tomato pickers, clerks, whatever, are
paid insufficient wages, and yes paying them more would make
everything more expensive. You may or may not agree, but my
opinion is that more income equality would benefit our society.

I've occasionally wondered if it wouldn't be more equitable to pay
workers based on how well they do a job, not on what the job is.

There are people who excel in their jobs, whether that be clerks,
engineers, physicians, or dogcatchers. All those jobs are essential.
Maybe the top performers should all be paid the same?

Yeah, I know - it's a utopian fantasy :-).

I don't see anything utopian about undermining peoples motivation.

Undermining their motivation? How do you see that Bill? Pay for
performance - that is motivation.


I agree with paying for performance--though measuring performance can
get really complex very fast. I thought he wanted to reward a "good"
engineer, a "good" clerk and a "good" dogcather with the same pay.

Larry B. does say, "Maybe all top performers should be paid the same".
Paying them all the same would, for some IMO, undermine the motivation
to be an engineer or physician: "I like to work with animals, I think
I'll work for animal control so I don't have to go to school for 8
years to be a veteranarian".

Plus, different activities have different values. A good engineer might
put 1,000 hours into a project that returns $1, $10 or even $100 million
to his employer as a return on its investment in his time. It would not
be out of line to pay such a worker $200,000 a year. No matter how good
a tomato picker might be, it's highly likely that his labors will return
$1,000 an hour to the farmer who hires him.