unobserved skill

[Enrique Diaz-Alvarez]

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> 
> That  lawyers remain the highest paid profession makes a joke out of the
> idea that high income is accounted for by the skill of its recipient
> (unless skill means ability to enter a corrupt profession for the sole
> purpose of making money);

Well, I hate lawyers too, but perhaps we could make less emotional
arguments?


>  meanwhile companies use H-1 visas to get
> the very best foreign programmers and engineers at basically working class
> wages which should shoot down any hypothesis about the positive relation
> between unobserved skill/cognitive ability/IQ  and income.
> 

It might, if the number of H-1 visas granted yearly accounted for more
than 0.05% of total employment in the US.


> Why do process engineers make less than design engineers make less than
> lawyers? It's not because each has a higher IQ or more unobserved skill
> than the other. It's simply because each is successively removed from the
> production process and closer to the bourgeoisie which devalues the
> contribution of production and productive labor generally

Ah. It all makes sense now. Marx said so.


> best, rakesh

Enrique