Seeking Jobs That Pay

People who attempt to amass wealth are warned:

1. It can be lost to untimely illness.
2. It can be lost to taxes or legal suits.
3. It can be lost to inflation and consumption.
4. Those who inherit what we amass may lack our competence or values.

Nonetheless, we choose how to spend our time, feel morally obliged to make the most valuable contributions we can, and rely on the labor market to evaluate potential contributions. According to the US Occupational Wage Estimates, the highest paying (i.e. most valuable) contributions are doctor, lawyer, manager/analyst, and post-secondary teacher with mean wages about seven, six, five and four times that for a maid/cook, respectively.

Analyzed deeply, this data doesn't really tell us to prize health, justice, progress and knowledge--many workers earn low wages, despite contributing health, justice, progress and knowledge pro-bono, through non-profits, or in developing countries--rather, the market tells us that the greatest contributions one can make to society are to address the four problems mentioned above with retaining wealth. It also reports success on the fourth: the highest paying jobs are, in fact, protected by systems of credentials (even though some credentialed workers choose lower-paying jobs), and thus more accessible to people to whom the wealthy choose to give scholarships.


At this point in the analysis, I have to pause for a sanity-check: "What is so morally valuable about defending the class gap?" It dawns on me that markets are systematically biased towards the interests of the wealthy, and therefore might not be a trustworthy authority on this matter. Perhaps it can be moral to ignore the market, to turn-down a more lucrative job offer or an educational program aimed at one.

Will Crouch and Ben Todd, philosophy students at Oxford, assured their classmates that we are nonetheless obliged to seek jobs that pay the most, and to contribute a substantial portion (10%) of earnings to charitable causes. An investment banker funding ten doctors in developing countries saves more lives than hardly anyone else does, and this benefit, they say, outweighs the cost of sacrificing one's own life to whatever career one must endure.

But the costs of choosing to be a banker should also include any damage done to others through the normal service of that career, much as a drug dealer must consider lives destroyed by drugs. It is difficult to calculate the damage done by those who defend the class gap. What would the world be like if it were not defended? Would the rich be less addicted to materialism? Would fewer people starve? Would there be fewer wars?

Concern that markets lead us morally astray sounds socialist, but socialism differs to its own kind of market, just substitute political for financial. Let's not get side-tracked into criticism of economic systems--good things and people have emerged from systems of each kind. My message to my kids is that some people should take their moral cues from an authority more reliable than markets, should recognize and fight addictions to amass wealth and power. The rest of us should feel morally obliged to reserve the role of defending classism, no matter what its wage, for them.