Government control of wages?

Question

In that the politicians use the "us against them" agenda,What do you feel the following jobs are worth:
1)Field worker
2)Minimally skilled factory worker
3) Doctor
4)Lawyer
5)Corporate executive

Or,should pay be based on need?Talent?Knowledge?

Just throwing this out there to get a general idea of what ya'll are thinking.

Jin Sock,
I was just e-mailing pip about that time in our history;thanks for bringing it up and clarifying it for me.
Amos

Answer 1

In the job market, the pay is directly related to all of the factors you listed. Just about anyone can do an assembly line job, that's why the pay is lower. Doctors and lawyers need more schooling, so there are less qualified people available, hence the more pay. Corporate execs are a bit different though, their pay is usually based on talent, the better they are, the more they get payed. And the scale there is huge, tens of thousands all the way up to tens of millions.

All of those jobs are important. I know even lawyers, but the 6th amendment requires that we have them. They are not all evil.

Answer 2

Under a Republican we once had a wage/price freeze.
Pay isn't based on need, or necessarily talent, certainly not on knowledge.
To some degree its based on education, with a healthy lump of whos your daddy. And a soupcon of are you cute with a dash of who you went to school with, and what school that was.
If it were based on difficulty of job and conditions,
Field workers and road crew workers would get paid the most. Truck drivers haven't got it easy either, lets say fifty dollars an hour.
Minimally skilled factory workers would get around twenty and hour, just for enduring the boredom.
Doctors would get around a two hundred and fifty an hour, they take time to develop, and spend a lot on education, but even then it would be a reduction. If you figure a doctor charges fifty dollars a patient and there are five patients an hour, and thats pretty low. Most doctors see many more patients and charge more too.
Lawyers are another specialized field, but they shouldn't make more than the doctor does.
Corporate execs? For sitting in air conditioned offices and not having their own money invested? The country would be in better shape if they made 35 dollars an hour.
With the ones that don't do anything positive for the company leaving with just their unemployment. They could get bonuses if they did good profitable thing for their companies.
Of course pigs ain't flying anytime soon, and so corporate execs will make 4000 time the wages of the lowest paid worker in their company, and they won' t be worth half of what that worker gets.

Answer 3

I don't know- I haven't researched salaries, nor do I have the job training for some of these, particularly 3 and 4. Having said that, concerning people at the bottom of the economic ladder- say, your second listing- while I'm at a loss to give you a precise figure (which could be affected by variables such as cost of living, and just how "minimally skilled" the person really is, for instance), that person should nonetheless be making a living wage. Otherwise, it begs the following question: What's the point of working a job that doesn't enable you to make ends meet?
Here's something you didn't mention, but that I'd like to contribute my two cents' worth to regardless: people in the public sector- including but not limited to the federal government- supposedly work for us, and not the other way around. We should therefore be the ones to set their salaries, and decide whether or not they get a raise. It never ceases to amaze me how nobody finds it objectionable that these people essentially give THEMSELVES raises, particularly when you look at their collective track records.

Answer 4

Nixon tried it.

He put a freeze on wages and prices to stop inflation.
It was innovative but, he had no support and the conservatives went bonkers.

It didn't work. It only set up Carter to send inflation into double digits and it damn near killed the country.

John Paul Getty said:
"Never pay a man a salary, pay him what he's worth"

What is he worth? He's worth whatever he can get.

If you were selling your car for $10,000 and somebody was offering you $15,000 would you tell him it's not worth that?
If you did you would be lying because now the car is worth $15,000 because that's what he offered.

Answer 5

What the job is worth? It's worth whatever you can get for it. Thank God for what free enterprise we have left. May we someday wake up and go back to the way it was intended to work.

The market should always set wages; never should the government be in that "business."

Answer 6

I think that there is no accurate way to assess what a job is worth. Also, it is none of my business. I am only concerned with my income. Everybody else is free to make as much or as little as they like.

Answer 7

1. 10.00 an hour
2. 10.00 an hour
3. 50.00 an hour
4 .38 cent a day
5. 30.00 an hour

I think Mayor Quimby and hate lawyers equally

Answer 8

If we get to a point where the government has to start controlling wages to fight inflation or the likes... then our economy is about to implode.

Social programs? sure I'm all for them.

Socialism? no.

Answer 9

1) $14/ hr
2) $14 /hr
3) $25 /hr
4) $20 /hr
5) $15 /hr

Answer 10

it should be based off the demand for the position and the number of people qualified and available to fill that posistion