Double your salary or better society?

Yes, of course they are two different things. It's my fault for trying to answer several different people in one post without any clear separation (I can totally see why you thought that was addressed at you, since much of the post was). That point was addressed at the people arguing that we are all basically selfish and that everyone would therefore take the £75k.

I feel bad constantly arguing against you because I respect you and you point of view. I hope from previous things you've said that you look at me the way I look at you: that if you really care about getting to the bottom of things, having an intelligent and informed person who disagrees with you is actually a gift (though I can't promise to always see through my own blind spots even with the help of such a person). You raise some good points and I'm not sure how to proceed here. Your experience is an interesting counterpoint to my own (to be expected, people aren't stupid so when they disagree it's often due to different experiences informing their viewpoints in different ways, obviously). FWIW my experience watching chefs in the catering industry in a variety of environments over 7 years is the following: there does seem to be a positive correlation between intelligence and skill on the one hand, and achievement on the other. However, while strong enough to be noticeable without the aid of a good statistician, this is not as strong a correlation as people seem to think, I can think of a few exceptions of amazing chefs that stopped at sous chef (perhaps due to luck or lack of confidence) and I can think of at least two mediocre chefs I have worked with who were very successful. With the most successful there is no mystery, he was an unscrupulous backstabbing * who (just in the 6 months I worked in the same, large, company) took the credit for the menu of one of his subordinates and deliberately engineered the dismissal of his direct subordinate. From what I have heard he also uses his wife's wealth to self-publicise aggressively. I can't name this man for obvious reasons. The other one is a nice guy, don't really know why he's done so well for himself. Perhaps he was in the right place at the right time.

As I say, I freely admit the correlation is there; I just don't think it's as strong as people think. That doesn't of course change the fact that if you believe that talent should be rewarded (and we all do to some extent) you have a point. I think we only differ on the extent to which we believe talent should be rewarded and (as I argue above) on the extent to which real-world wage inequality is a reflection of talent.

With hard work my experience has been totally different to yours, ideally we need to look for some statistics. In my experience there is zero (neither positive nor negative) correlation between hard work and success.
Firstly my own pay: I've worked in places that were pretty easy and I've worked in places that were so hard that (because I rarely drink) I literally had to take pain killers to get to sleep after 15 hour shifts of joint-straining effort without any break (the chefs used alcohol to the same effect) and two things were constant. The first was my wage. The second was that everyone thought they had a hard job (almost without exception). Naturally most places fall between these two extremes.

I also look at chefs and see no correlation between effort and reward. I remember a Polish chef I worked with, he was a chef de partie, absolutely amazing guy, did the work of two, everybody loved him. When the sous chef left and they promoted someone, was it him? No. It was the former girlfriend of one of the company's high fliers (and yes, I've seen that kind of thing happen a few times). To be fair she was a good chef and a decent worker (she also had poor man-management skills though!), but he was much better. I've seen many chefs regularly working 80+ hour weeks (without breaks) and getting paid for 48 hours (and I'm talking skilled workers working their absolute bollocks off here) for £15k or £16k a year.

I do believe from your experience that hard work must correlate positively with income in your field (and doubtless some others- I'm pretty sure it's often the case when people run their own businesses, for instance), so please don't think I'm insulting you; but I think the pattern I've seen in catering must also be common. We really need some actual statistics here, though. We need statistics on both the correlation between income and current hard work and good prospective studies on the correlation with previous hard work. How would you quantify hard work, though? You'd probably have to use some unsatisfactory proxy like hours worked.

If you'll indulge me in a little unfounded speculation, I suspect the correlation with current hard work to actually be negative, just a little hunch I feel by analogy with what happened with the widespread idea of "executive stress". When people's stress was actually measured it turned out the correlation between socioeconomic status and stress was strongly negative. That result was surprising (and still not widely known ).
Of course the idea that the situation with hard work will be the same is unfounded speculation on my part. I thought it worth throwing in to show how counterintuitive the actual relationship might be.

In the end, though, of course people need to be rewarded for hard work.
Since I'd bet my left nipple that how hard people work will follow a normal distribution and not the right-skewed distribution of income distribution, this means that even if there turns out to be a strong positive correlation between hard work and income, it would only justify salaries up to a certain level. As a quick example, if someone on the UK NMW worked 100 hours a week (and believe me some of them work as hard as anybody!), they'd only earn just under £31k.


Arguably you need to encourage the development of skill by rewarding that too. But unless and until there is genuine equality of opportunity, that is always going to lead to some injustice.

 

Jungo, mate. Other countries don't lack water because they are somehow too thick obtain it and to organise its distribution. Did you really think that through?
The fact that different climates are involved should be obvious (you're Scottish ffs :smiley-laughing002. Also there's a lot of "politics" involved (read theft). For instance, its water resources are one of the main reasons for what Israel has been doing in the West Bank all these years. Were the Palestinians just "lacking the brains" to stop their water resources being stolen?

 

Good

 

Tbh I don't gee a * mate

I just answered question best I could I would take money as my family come first

To bring running water etc into it is madness

 

It's easy to not give a * when you're packing over 8 inches. The rest of us have to care to take our minds off our inadequacies.

 

1.) Absolutely. You are my favourite sparring partner on here. Forums wouldnt be nearly as much fun if we all agreed

2.) I think you are right. The thing is, some of the regulars on here take the * (in jest) at my general right of centre attitute in most economic debates . They think I am "middle class" because of it - but I really just call things as I see it. In real life, I am very thrifty - I buy most of my stuff in the sale, I live in a 1 bedroom flat, use the bus instead of buying a car, etc. My parents are what they would call tradional working class and they have worked very hard without ever making much money. My dad has worked in the same factory since he was 16 and I think after a lot of overtime he earns about £22k a year. My mum works part time in a shop.

So in one sense I look at people like my parents and I think they may deserve more. They have bust a gut to work their whole life to ensure they can provide for their kids, and they successfully did so. But then at the same time, they are very sensible in life: they dont smoke or drink, they dont have sky, they have the cheapest mobile (single) you can get, they they paid off their mortgage on their small ex-council house in a cheap part of the country, they have an inexpensive car, etc. And if you ask them they are perfectly happy because while they dont earn much they live a simple, inexpensive life. They spend all their money on expensive holidays because that is what they take pleasure in but they save for a year to make this happen. In the work place they chose not to seek promotions and higher level jobs because they would rather spend time with each other and their family.

That is why it annoys me that so many people (not you of course) have this sense of entitlement that people are somehow oppressed if they have to buy stuff in the sale or they cannot afford sky tv, or someone suggests they should consider where they can afford to live or how many kids they can afford to have. Because to me it is common sense and you dont need material luxury to live a happy life. To me we need to completely revise what sense of entitlement we have in life, and what we really need to live a happy life. That isnt to say there arent very poor people who are lacking the basic necessities, but the vast majority of discussion on here seems based on bleating about a lack of luxuries rather than a lack of necessities (again not you).

Because my parents have a work ethic they made me get a paper round when I was 14 or so. Then when I was 17 they made me get a job in McDonalds. I remember kids from pretty poor backgrounds at school taking the * because I worked at McDonalds (they were far too cool for that). When I was 20 or so (still at McDonalds) I remember hearing people moan at the time that there were no jobs - this attitude is why at a time when anyone could have walked into an entry level job, we still had over 1.5m people unemployed in the UK.

Since then I have worked in shops, bars, and then pro-gambler, teaching, academia, then finance. To be honest across the whole spectrum of employment I never felt I deserved more than I got - from minimum wage to the job I have now. I have also saw the hardest working and most driven people get on, while those with less drive and ambition havent. I have met many people with an attitude of doing the minimum in life, doing enough to live, and doing more than enough to ensure a higher standard of living, and by in large the jobs and income of all these people reflect this. This is where our experience differs and perhaps why our opinions differ. And this doesnt equate to being better or worse human beings - people just have different attitudes to work and life.

I have never defined myself by employment. I didnt consider a failure when I worked for minimum wage, just as I dont feel a success now for earning a decent wage. I am by nature hypercritical of myself but income has nothing to do with it. When I was made redundant a few years ago I felt gutted and a failure in an objective setting sense, but not in the sense of being a human being. I just dont see employment in that way.

In any case, there is a bit of personal context to my rather laissez faire attitudes!

 

Superb

 

I'd take the 70k like nearly everyone would giving the opportunity.

 

Fair enough. I did not make the distinction, however I still have a point. In this particular scenario, I believe most people would look after themselves first, assuming there isn't peer pressure from a larger group when making the decision.


Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

I certainly agree RR that there is very little evidence for positive correlation between hard work and success especially when it comes to manual labour or physical labour.

I think that it is wrong it is this way but its pretty simple economics in that a lot of people can do low skilled work thereby the wage corresponding to the work no matter how laborious remains low.

I would consider chefs to be quite skilled workers, not everyone can do it, so i am surprised at the lower wage received but then there must be a lot of competition which drives wages down.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of colleges and universities being free, we're incredibly lucky in this aspect in Scotland and to be honest it * me off when people say their unemployable etc... but whenever college gets mentioned their not interested at all, despite being a chance of getting a good career at the end of it.

I believe that you should help those who help themselves because I have absolutely no interest in helping someone that does nothing but complain about the state of their life and how it's all the governments fault, yet they don't take any action of their own to try and better themselves.

 

Red herring, mate. My university degree has never got me anything in the job market. I can think of a couple of other pot-washers who were just washing pots for money whilst completing their masters and are still stuck doing it. I can't count the number of full time waiters I know who have a bachelor's degree or better. I bet your mates would be a lot more interested if most graduates went on to get decent jobs.

 

Interesting post, mate. Just setting off to spend the night at my sister's, so I'll not be able to reply until tomorrow night. Not ignoring your reply.

 

£70,000 isn't anywhere near enough ffs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2308344/Petronella-Wyatt-Its-hell-posh-poor.html

 

I think the problem is that there is now a disconnect between the number of grads and the number of grad roles.

Tradionally I think the workforce, from memory, was always considered a 70%/30% split between non-professional and professional occupations. The number nowadays arguably has become even more skewed towards unskilled work but lets assume that the 70/30 still holds true. Blair and co had a target on getting 50% of kids into higher education during their time in government. The problem is that the number of grad roles havent increased, nor were they ever going to.

So even if we assume that every professional job needs a degree (which isnt true), you are left with half of school leavers going to uni or college, when there is only room for 30% of them in the total work force. The numbers were never going to add up.

Now some people may argue that the best grads will end up with the best jobs anyway, so in that sense nothing has changed for them. But whether that is true or not, it leaves a lot of people with a relatively worthless degree (in real terms) and a ton of debt, with little chance of them every getting a professional level job.

The system was ridiculous from the start. It was never going to work but as it was only ever created to lower unemployment numbers it was never going to work.

 

While I can see why this sort of article can annoy people and remembering it is the Daily Fail.... £80k per year won't go far in London - After tax and rent/mortgages people are left with very little.

Of course this is insulting those earning 20k etc.

 

It depends on how relevant your degree is though, i'm doing accounting just now and i'm pretty confident that the degree along with work experience will do me well in getting a job.

If your degree is in art, history or some other non relative subject then i agree you'll find it hard to get a good job. I knew a guy who worked as a receptionist with a good degree from Glasgow uni, however unfortunately for him his degree was in celtic studies or something like that which is not relevant at all for any jobs that i can think of.

 

80K a year most places is not enough these days, lifestyle rises with money.

 

Aye I agree with this 100% there's no point in completing a degree or a masters if it's not going to be of any use to you in finding a job, like I was saying in a post above if your degree is in history, art, music or something equally irrelevant then you have on your hands a practically worthless degree.

However if you have one in something more relevant like engineering or business then I believe that it will stand you in good stead for getting a good job.