My wife is a nurse in the NHS. She actually saves people from cancer, or at least prolongs their lives. Her work is difficult, with huge responsibility. She gets a pay cut this year in real terms.
I make slight improvements to computer systems. In most of the jobs I've done, despite my best efforts to work for reasonably ethical companies, I've not been convinced I've made anyone's lives better. Yet my salary is 2-3 times hers.
I find it hard to believe there can't be a better way to arrange this kind of stuff.
It's an interesting problem, because we currently align economic 'productivity' and pay rather than social value and pay, which is efficient since we don't have to redistribute resources between industries or roles, and resource redistribution is a dirty word, at least in America. My wife is a doctor and I make significantly more than her working as an SRE, when her job is significantly more difficult (particularly emotionally) and time consuming than mine. She's paid relatively well on a societal scale, but I'd still call it a labor of love. If you're not in one of the high paid specialties, you don't do it for the money.
Even in the (US) medical system, pay/insurance reimbursement is based on the number of procedures you do, not how involved the treatment is. This is why surgeons get paid so much more.
Athletes and celebrities are paid because of economic productivity? It definitely seems like social value based on restricted supplies.
If there are lot of participants in a labor pool, naturally wages will be under constant pressure. The barriers to entry also play a role.
For those RN's quitting, they will simply be replaced by foreign workers. It's similar to how certain jobs no longer have locals in it anymore, instead relying on migrant workers. It's the reality in Singapore for instance and naturally creates an implicit caste system.
Now the markets have evolved/evolving where incumbent locals are no longer granted the same privileges they once enjoyed, somebody who does not have the luxury to consider alternatives will be the ones who fill the jobs, and get the blame when the descendants of local incumbents cannot make their way back.
This is sort of the system I am seeing emerging and it explains the anxiety of us vs them. In reality, the government, markets simply do not care for such superficiality. It seeks to accomodate those who are productive, not sit around waiting for higher powers to "fix". And as such, this dynamic ensures wages in certain industries stagnate, and it's especially true in markets with the characteristics I mentioned above: low barrier to entry and abundant supply of labor.
Not directly, but indirectly, this is one reason why bigger companies can pay more than small companies, more efficiencies, automations, and economies of scale means the output per employee is higher.
I make slight improvements to computer systems. In most of the jobs I've done, despite my best efforts to work for reasonably ethical companies, I've not been convinced I've made anyone's lives better. Yet my salary is 2-3 times hers.
I find it hard to believe there can't be a better way to arrange this kind of stuff.