OK, Kells, now I'll mix it up with Steve some. I have no idea what I did to tick you off, btw, Kells. jks
Steve said:
>I bet the humanities avg is a LOT lower.
As well it should be. I've seen how hard the engineering students work. Getting 2 humanities degrees has, on the other hand, felt like a mild supplement to my leisure activities, ie reading and writing about things that interest me. Why should I expect to make a lot of money doing what I love?
* *
So an engineering student who likes her work should get paid less? And a philosophy student who doesn't should get paid more? That's a strange principle of justice.
Personally, I think that once there's high enough minumum guarantee so that everyone gets assurance of a decent life, remuneration should be left to the market, with some political judgments mixed in about raising compensation in areas where we want more folks, or where the market won't provide for a public good, and of course to maintain political equality (which has a lot of space for economic inequality. That way we don't have to make subjective judgments about how much to adjust for hwo much people like their work.
Anyway, I never said that humanities profs are paid "too little," just that I thought they were paid less; and I added that when I was a humanities prof I didn't have any complaints about my pay. I do think, as a matter of fact, that humanities profs are paid too litle (and soi are public schoolteachers, and roadworkers, and arirline mechanics, and secretaries . . .. )
I will also say that both as a humanities student and as a prof I any my colleagues worked "as hard" (if that means sheer hours of concentrated work) as anyone, including as hard as I now work as a piranha. Btw, I like the work I do as a piranha. Does that mean I should be be paid less than a piranha who doesn't?
>The med, eng'g and law schools are a lot higher.
>jks
> as much as i enjoy literary theory, nobody has ever died for want of a
deconstruction
Again, I don't understand your point. Are you susbcribing to the "frills" school, that everything that doesn't -- what -- immediately contribute to sativing off death or raising the material standard of living (measured how? calorie content in the diet? but not, evidently, deconstruction, arts, the fairy stuff) is some sort of extragavance that shoukd not receive social support? T
That is not consistent with either the principle that people who work "harder" should be paid more, or people who like their jobs more should be paid less. After all, it might be that most people who do lifesaving work or work that is necessary to maintain a higher material standard of living for all (a) work less hard than others, and (b) enjoy their work more. These principles pull ina ll directions, and it is very hard to imagine a way to structure them in a nonarbitrary manner. Moreover there are lots of other popular intuitions people have about the payworthiness of work that would have to be factored into the mix.
That is why it is better not to try to think of calibrating compensation individually to meet moral criteria. Leave it up to the market and the political process with some broad guidelines: (1) everyone gets enough to live well, and (2) no one gets enough to buy a lot more power than anyone else.
jks
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