Friday, July 12, 2019

MORE ON WAGE INEQUALITY


I should like today to expand on my rather facetious example of Shamus Kahn and Winston Gordon III [see July 4th above] because I seem not to have made myself adequately clear.  The question is whether, leaving aside the costs of preparation, the present structure of inequality in wages and salaries is required to attract the right people into the appropriate jobs.  This is going to take a while, so get yourself a cup of coffee and settle down.

Human beings, as Marx observed, live by purposefully and collectively transforming nature so as to satisfy their needs and desires.  For at least the last ten thousand years and maybe more [we do not know], they have done this by differentiating these activities into roles and functions so that no individual, not even a farmer or hunter, does by himself or herself all of the things required to live.  In a capitalist society, in which some own or control the means of production and hire others to use those means to produce goods for sale – which is to say commodities – most men and women live by holding down a job and being paid a wage or a salary.  In virtually all modern capitalist economies the structure of wages and salaries is steeply pyramidal, with large numbers of low wage jobs, rather fewer middle wage jobs, and a small percentage of high or even stratospheric salaried jobs [numerically large, of course, in a country with 330 million people.]

To what extent, if at all, is this inequality in compensation necessary to motivate those with special and rare skills to prepare themselves for, and then to fill, those jobs whose effective performance requires those rare and special skills?   And can that supposed necessity explain the existing structure of compensation?

First things first.  We know that the current structure of compensation is not necessary because not too long ago [at least as old guys like me measure time, which is to say in the Fifties and Sixties of the last century ] the structure of compensation was a good deal less unequal in the United States with no measurable shortfall in efficiency.

Second, let us please not commit some form of the inverse of what logicians call the fallacy of composition.  No doubt if all else is held constant, a single company [or university] will have to pay a big salary to hold onto an employee in demand or to woo one away from a competitor. I am asking a different question:  Is the structure of unequal compensation required to get the people in society in general who are best suited for the jobs currently highly paid to seek out and take such jobs?  I am suggesting that the answer is no.

One way to think about this is to imagine that the entire American economy is one vast corporation – USA. inc. – with agricultural, manufacturing, service, technology, educational and other divisions whose total output each year is the Gross Domestic Product.  Suppose as well that there are no corporations elsewhere in the world that might bid for some of the employees of USA inc.  Each year, young people are tested by the employment office to determine which jobs at USA inc. they are best suited for.  Jobs requiring further schooling carry with them scholarships to pay for that preparation.  Don’t get hung up on the details.  Tweak this any way you wish to suit your cavils.  Now, let us suppose pay is to be equal, save when higher pay is needed to attract the right people into the key jobs.  What would happen?

Well, if too few people choose to be maintenance personnel, sweeping floors, emptying trash baskets, cleaning toilets, and washing windows, then it might be necessary to raise the wages of those jobs to fill them.  If a great many people want to be division managers, and if testing shows that there are more well suited people wanting those jobs than are needed, then it will not be necessary to raise the pay associated with those jobs above the social norm.  And so forth.

Note, by the way, that in such a system, the social norm would probably be a good deal higher than the current median wage, and way higher than the wages now paid to scores of millions of low wage workers.

In such a system, would anyone at all choose to be a brain surgeon or a tech software developer or a corporate manager or a Sociology professor?   I suspect they would when confronted with the list of all the other available jobs. 

What should those folks be paid?  In thinking about this question, it is extraordinarily difficult to break away from our deeply embedded assumptions about the lifestyles appropriately associated with certain jobs.  Since no one reading this blog is a corporate bigwig, I imagine, it is easy for us all to nod and say, “Yes, there is no reason why a corporate CEO needs a yacht and a private jet.  Why shouldn’t he or she be content with a three bedroom house in a nice suburban neighborhood?”   But if I suggest that perhaps a board certified oncologist and a seamstress should live comparable lives, the soul rebels.

By the way, note a related point not always acknowledged:  the larger the pool of young people considered appropriate candidates for the key jobs – the more women or African-Americans or Latinx, or LGBTQ people one includes – the easier it will be to fill those key jobs and accordingly the less likely it is that higher salaries will be required to lure enough suitable candidates to apply.

Well, turn these remarks over in your mind and see whether they somewhat alter your settled assumptions about the rationale for the wage and salary pyramid.



18 comments:

  1. Love your stuff... but I fear you are dating yourself. The "goods producing" part of the economy is now down to about 12%. Most "hired out" jobs controlled by capitalists are now in the service industry. That is still alienating you from your own labour, but I fear that using Marxist early industrialist case studies may put off the younger generations.

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  2. I may be out of line, but it seems to me that the idea of "training for a job" is an elitist view. Those born of a professional class can aim for a "professional job" (which in my view is the strongest union job you can have because they make blue collar unions look like pussycats). In the mid 20th century universities switched from being the playground of the elite to being a training ground for professional classes. At that point you could "train" for a job, but the number of such jobs was severely limited, i.e. "professional jobs".

    My own experience may not be typical but using a sample size of one -- myself! -- I remember being pulled aside by a physics teacher in high school who asked me if I had thought of going to college. I hadn't. He then advised me to "become an engineer" and I responded "but why would I want to drive a train?"

    I did go to college because I got a scholarship (being a NMSQT semi-finalist). But I had no "profession" in mind. In fact I had no clue about the job market. It was a toss-up between math and philosophy for me. I came out with a philosophy degree which "prepared" me for nothing. I spent a dozen years bouncing around various jobs before I ended up programming computers and over the next 30 years went from programmer to analyst to researcher fighting the "closed shop" of an engineer-dominated company. I came to detest "professional societies" and how they are dedicated to job protection and job advancement for their "brother professionals".

    I understand the point you are trying to make, but like all "models" it is far too simplistic. There is no "trade off" between schooling and early income. I think I'm fairly typical for those from the bottom 70% of society, i.e. getting a job is a struggle and a mystery. There is no "career path". That is only for the professional classes, the top 30%. You end up with the jobs you get by mostly luck. When I finally fell into computing it was because I took a quick year at a technical school and looked up with company in the area had the "most computers". After applying half a dozen times I finally got a call asking if I was still interested in "the job". I had no idea what "the job" was, but I said "yes!". It ended up being business processing for a company that built scientific and government computer systems. Over the coming years I switched from the business side to the scientific side. Then after fighting my way into more technical positions I ended up in their research department developing new technology for the company. That wasn't a "career path". There was never a question of a "trade off" between delaying getting a job to get more training in order to qualify for a higher salary. There was never a choice. I scrambled to take what I could when things "turned up".

    The idea that workers "negotiate" for a salary is absurd. You take what you can get. And you are always with the short end of the stick. Business carefully hides statistics about "what the market is paying" so they can whittle down any "negotiation" and make you take less.

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  3. (cut off by 4096 char count... so I continue)

    The problem I've always had with "revolutionaries" is that they simplify the "dynamics" of a society to a cartoon version. I'm OK with simplification to explain principles. But to expect that the real world works according to a model is absurd. A model is a learning tool. The real world is endlessly complex.

    But I do enjoy your blog and read it and will continue reading it. I love your perspective on the world even when I don't agree. You make me think. That's the real joy in life. Living to learn, living to experience new things and understand things more deeply. I can think of no higher "calling" in life. Drudgery is what we do (or I did) in order to earn my daily bread so that in my "free" time I could live and learn. I love the Internet because it makes people like you able to spread ideas, even ideas I don't always fully agree with. But what a wonder! What a joy! To me the Internet is like the crack in the Universe that book publishing made possible: the spread of ideas far and wide, new ideas, new discussions, greater insights!

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  4. Your example seems to rest on the assumption that everyone is able to do every job. If the supply of talent for a particular skill is low, it might be necessary to pay more in order to induce people to do the job. It might be easier for some talented people to do a job that most people could do in order to avoid the pressure and stress of something more mentally or emotionally or physically demanding.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. Matt: A marvelous display against economic analysis of any kind.

    My default position is that, yes, everyone is able to do every job. I don't understand what "skills" and "talent" mean. Is it in fact the case that some people are better at some things than others? I'm not so sure.

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  7. Matt,

    I've met a lot of people who are smarter than I am. When I was a kid I wanted to be a major league baseball player. Not a chance. Neurosurgery is out too.

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  8. Sorry. My post above should have been in reply to Dean.

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  9. And mine above should have been in reply to David Palmetr! I suppose some of us have more or less talent, as the case may be, at addressing interlocutors.

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  10. How do we know that the current allotment of jobs and wages isn't a Nash equilibrium? We can say that rush hour traffic is a Nash equilibrium: it's virtually impossible to learn anything new by trying out a new route to work. Everyone has already done this. Are the two cases analogous? My guess is that little short of a reassignment of property rights would lead to a substantial change in salaries for different jobs. A different assignment of property rights would lead to different market outcomes, but the case of wages is different--at least in the current system--in that wages aren't cleared in a market, but are generally negotiated--(unless they are dictated)--between an employer and an employee (or a contractor), or between an employer and a union. If you wonder what property rights have to do with jobs and salaries--a good docile employee will struggle and fail to make this connection--ask who owns your job: you or your employer. In a right-to-work state, it's your employer. Discrimination is an assertion of property rights (to say the least).

    But a different assignment of property rights might lead to different institutional forms under which job and and wage allocations would not resemble the present system. Parecon was an attempt. In any case, I agree that one should make the effort to imagine the range of institutional forms possible--if not immediately available.

    We can assume to some extent that the testing and accreditation process will tend to favor the prevailing system of property rights--meaning that it helps if you come from money, though there are certain fields where talent cannot be discounted (music, mathematics, athletics). As for wealth, there is some evidence that the wealthiest individuals are rarely the most talented. See the MIT Technology Review article If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Turns out it's just chance.

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  11. NN @4:16 must mean at-will state in the penultimate sentence of the first paragraph. Right-to-work is about obligations of employees to unions. At-will is about discretion to fire or quit without cause.

    As for whether rush hour traffic is a Nash equilibrium, well, clearly NN has never lived in Los Angeles. I would guess that a small percentage of commuters there (when I was traversing LA County east-to-west) bothered with alternatives.

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  12. A useful book on the explanation of inequality (and why it seems to be accelerating) is Frank and Cook 'The Winner-Take-All Society' (1995, new edition 2010). One of its most interesting aspects is that it helps explain inequalities of *esteem* as well as inequalities of financial reward. (Why, is it , for instance that a tiny minority academic papers have stacks of citations whereas the average paper only has one or two? The distribution of citations in most disciplines resembles a concave pyramid, with a wide very flat base and a tall narrow spire )

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  13. Dean is correct: At will--I misspoke. But I don't think Dean understands what a Nash equilibrium is. See the first few pages of <a href="http://www.dklevine.com/archive/refs4786969000000001307.pdf'>Wither game theory?</a> by the game theorists Drew Furstenberg David K. Levine. Profs Furstenberg and Levine gives the example of rush hour traffic as an example of a Nash equilibrium.

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  14. I don't understand what a Nash equilibrium is. So what? I simply dispute that "it's virtually impossible to learn anything new by trying out a new route to work." The paper states, "Nash equilibrium is the requirement that no commuter can save any time
    by taking a different route." It also states (somewhat coyly, which is the economist's typical register), "Some people try different routes and settle on the ones that seem the quickest. That is, players have many opportunities to play and they learn from their experience."

    The upshot: over time, more people will figure out the perhaps marginally superior routes. Again, so what? I learned new things by trying new routes.

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  15. Fudenberg, not Furstenberg. My eyesight is failing. I meant to provide the argument with exactly Los Angeles as the example, and here it is, on page 13 of Is Behavioral Economics Doomed? by David K. Levine.

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  16. Levine's anecdote conflicts with mine. And so...what? He gained no advantage. I did. So much for his anecdote.

    But the introduction of rush hour was only an analogy for allocations of jobs and wages. Is the suggestion that we have already achieved -- under the given property rights regime -- the ideal allocation?

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  17. To say that these financial bonuses and such are 'necessary to motivate' people to work, at their jobs, implies that it is sufficient. However, the smartest, most talented people have better things to do with their time than wage slavery. They can, just for example, go win a bunch of money playing poker and be done with the work world entirely. But if you are even smarter than that you might be too cool to worry about money at all. Just sit and contemplate the verities, like an Olympic God. In any case, if you want to think you don't have to pay people to get them to work, then fine, get them to work with a pep talk about altruism or somesuch. But then what is it that you want to buy with the money you save? If you can get people to give you labor for free, then why not get them to give you whatever else you want for free, while you are at it?

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  18. No one said anything about not paying anyone. Since economics is a quantitative subject the question is: how much would it take to motivate them? What is the number of the smartest, most talented people? The number of even smarter people? Without these numbers, "don't waste our time." [See pages 11--12 on reasoning with lawyers and philosophers on economic issues.]

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