Are those with "prestigious" jobs paid less?

[cyberianpan]

CNN




Let's admit it: We all need to feel special sometimes. Well, if you're a firefighter, scientist or teacher, you should. After all, a new Harris poll indicates that plenty of Americans already think you are.

Ok they are US figures but they probably hold here. Real question: is prestige part of the reward ? So are people with "prestigious" jobs paid less ? Should they be ?

Look at the low prestige jobs: they are (mostly) highly paid !!


So are our teachers overpaid ?

cYp

[feargach]

Supply 'n' demand.

High-prestige jobs get many times more applicants than there are paying jobs. People are so desperate to be the high-pres thing, they bid down the wages and do it for less.

is prestige part of the reward?

You serious? Yah huh!

[Pidge]

Could part of the reason that low-prestige jobs are regarded as such be because they are paid highly?

I think the vocational nature of the high-prestige jobs, as well as the large numbers of applicants for them keeps the wages down. Some groups are certainly underpaid, but it's too narrow to examine either the worth or benefits (to the worker) of a job by looking at the pay.

[feargach]

So are our teachers overpaid?

Pretty easy way to find out, I guess.

Cut teachers' pay to 50% of what it currently is. A certain number will quit at once. So you just squeeze all the pupils into the classrooms of those who remain after the first wave of resignations.

It's very possible that the dropout rate from the teacher training colleges will be quite low, at first. Prestige at work. The odd but real glamour of shaping young minds will persuade wannabe teachers from immediately dropping their vocation. After all, they are already foregoing massively high potential lifetime pay and career advancement prospects by choosing teaching in the first place. They've already chosen never to own a house in the nice part of town.

The clincher, of course, is the next 3 years on the job. Will it even be possible to retain as much as 10% of teachers.

When the cold hard facts of a life of extreme absolute poverty, relative to everybody else with 3rd-level education, become obvious, will the teacher training facilities still be over-subscribed?

And, of course, I'm not even considering the possibility that standards will fall to such an extent that even kids who want to learn, don't. Though one might want to ponder what effect this would have on teachers' resignation rates.

Anyhow, you posed the question. Say you are given the absolute authority to enact this experiment, as described above. Do you do it or not? No cherry picking: the above way is the only way to know for sure whether we're over-rewarding them significantly.

[ibis]

Interesting that all the high-prestige jobs are 'socially useful'. Not exactly surprising, but pleasant.

[nonpartyboy]

The ordinary american loves the police , military , firefighters they get discounts almost everywhere they go,ordinary americans don't pay too much attention to the criminals on Wall st.
It's a far cry from the corrupt criminal scumbags that get looked up to in this country, and some people say everything in america is wrong,at least the ordinary man on the street has some kind of value system.

[Maalox]

I would want to know what definition of "prestige" is being used here, who is drafting that definition, and to what purpose the study was done. I am skeptical.

Several of those jobs listed as "high-prestige" are what I would consider relatively low in prestige: farmer, nurse, teacher. In fact I will be bold and say that most Americans would not consider these particularly high-prestige jobs. Teachers as a collective group get a surprising amount of abuse in public debate on education. They get blamed somewhat unfairly for the various ills of our educational system. My mother was a nurse and I think she'd be a little surprised to hear that Americans generally regarded it as a prestige job. Farming? I don't think anyone looks down on them, but since it involves a lot of manual labor I wouldn't think it make a prestige list. Unless Americans defined prestige as: "it's something to be proud of but we wouldn't do it."

I'd also argue that before 9/11, the prestige of policemen was not exactly at a high point. Although I can certainly see Americans revising that opinion. Anyone who risks his life in the public service on a regular basis is held in high esteem these days. (And rightly so.) But the police in particular got some derision from segments of the population, back when we had some high-profile police brutality accusations/incidents here. (References to pork products and the like. The military, before 1991, was also widely reviled.)

Meanwhile, banker, business exec, actor, entertainer, athlete especially, all strike me as high-prestige jobs. Americans worship athletes. Another point: a lot of Americans actually equate prestige and salary, so for a lot of folks the very idea of a low-paying, high-prestige job is somewhat counterintuitive. That said, we have had several issues with corrupt businessmen, crooked acoountants and brokers, athletes on performance-enchancing substances - oh, and we're in a slumping real-estate market. So there are traceable reasons those jobs would finish low.

Which brings me finally to the question: what does prestige mean? If prestige means, "do people respect athletes right now?" or "do people respect firemen right now?" that would lead you to one set of answers. But if prestige means, "which job would I want my kid to have?" or "which job impresses me most when I personally meet someone who does that for a living?" then it will lead you a very different set of answers. Case in point: lawyers. Every American hates lawyers, but most Americans would be delighted if their kid became one.

[nonpartyboy]

Maybe you just ain't an ordinary american ,things are a bit more simpler to them.
Right v Wrong
Good v Bad
etc.

[Sidewinder]

The "high prestige" jobs are those where the person actually does something useful. The "low prestige" jobs are basically a bunch a parasitical gob************************es who make this world sh!t by their mere presence. I'm only surprised by the lack of "Marketing Executive" in the low prestige list.

Let's face it. A mad dictator could come to power in the morning and shoot everybody on the "low prestige" list (plus the Marketdroids) and nobody sane would care. Surplus to requirements, do nothing remotely useful, but generate huge amounts of acting-busy utterly-pointless bullsh1t "economic activity" that gets measured in GDP figures.

Yet these same waste-of-space drooling imbeciles are the ones that make the most money.

The entire Western system is fundamentally broken.

[joemomma]

Let's face it. A mad dictator could come to power in the morning and shoot everybody on the "low prestige" list (plus the Marketdroids) and nobody sane would care. Surplus to requirements, do nothing remotely useful, but generate huge amounts of acting-busy utterly-pointless bullsh1t "economic activity" that gets measured in GDP figures.

What about the actors? What would we watch on the television?

Won't somebody please think of the actors?