As The Times has noted in a series of recent articles, the very richest earners are increasing their earnings at twice the rate of their onetime peers, and the average-rich are taking resentful note. Investment bankers are jealous of hedge-fund wunderkinds and, from the sound of it, almost every last person in Silicon Valley is envious of the founders of YouTube (with the likely exception of the Google billionaires who bought their company).
It’s hard for people flying in coach to have much patience with those in first class bemoaning their lack of a personal jet. Neither policymakers nor society at large need sympathize with the longing of millionaires to become billionaires. But we do need to worry about the effects on society as a whole when members of the educated elite think they are grossly underpaid. The more they feel as if they are losing ground against their peers, the more likely they are to ditch professions in which the pay is only good — like delivering babies — in favor of less useful careers in which the compensation is off the charts — like eliminating lines from wealthy people’s foreheads.
America has long had a problem attracting enough well-trained people to important but not particularly well-compensated positions, like public defender, social worker or teacher. But an era in which a cancer researcher moves over into health-care management consulting because the pay is better — as Louis Uchitelle reported in The Times this week — is something else entirely.
Part of the explanation is undoubtedly a tax code that has sent the incomes of the wealthiest sliver of the nation into hyperdrive. Another might be the spike in education costs, which send many new doctors, lawyers and scientists out into the world armed with a diploma and a six-figure debt. But the bottom line seems to be that in 21st-century America, more people can’t feel successful unless they’re making a killing.