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The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S.
misbach writes "Here is what the 'compensation experts' have to say are the
ten most
overpaid jobs [original article at CBS MarketWatch]. 'Almost no one in America would admit to being
overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
'Fair compensation' is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and
executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't
be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.'"
I have to think about 9) Pilots for major airlines. If the plane hits inclement weather or other serious issues arise do you really care if the people behind the cockpit doors are making ~250K a year?
Oh and 2) Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts? Crap. All major sports athletes are overpaid primadonnas. Paying them millions because they can throw a ball only fuels consumerism. "Did you watch the game on Sunday? Wow!" mindless sheep..
Trolling is a art,
thanks for slashdotting the site already, you ugly hairy subscribers
I think I know the #1 most
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
So much for alwayson-network
The first clue you're being paid too much is when you start building castles instead of homes. ;-)
It's disingenous to include "CEO's of underperforming companies" when you can't include the man who's in charge of software technology for Microsoft and the whole thing is riddled with security issues. I'd say he's being paid a bit too much with that track record.
This should say almost every day
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
AlwaysOn Network Web Site Architect/Administrator
My guess at number #1 has got to be CEO of a major corp.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I mean, come on! are we all that afraid that WE'RE overpaid?
..i'm just getting a site that wants me to log in, whereas everyone else seems to be reporting a /.ing.. odd.
is that the pilots for the non-major airlines are making so, so much less.
Is this because the pilots for the major airlines are better? Is it because the lives they protect are worth more? No. It's because they have a better union.
This was taken from http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1016490/posts SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Almost no one in America would admit to being overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved. "Fair compensation" is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances. And while it's easy to argue that chief executives, lawyers and movie stars are overpaid, reality is not that cut and dry. Corporate attorneys earning $500 an hour and plaintiffs lawyers pocketing a third of a class-action or personal-injury settlement certainly don't go hungry. Yet many local prosecutors and public defenders are hard-pressed to pay off law-school loans. Hollywood stars, making $20 million a movie or $10 million per TV-season, qualify for many people's overpaid list. But for every one of those actors and actresses, there are a thousand waiting tables and taking bit movie parts or regional theater roles awaiting a big break that never comes. "A lot of people are overpaid because there are certain things consumers just don't want screwed up," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com. "You wouldn't want to board a plane flown by a second-rate pilot or hire a cheap wedding photographer to record an event you hope happens once in your lifetime. "With pro athletes, one owner is willing to pay big money for a star player and then all the other players want to keep up with the Joneses," Coleman said. "The art with CEO pay is making sure your CEO is above the median -- and you see where that goes." What follows is a list of the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S., in reverse order, drafted with input from compensation experts: 10) Wedding photographers Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding, for what amounts to a one-day assignment plus processing time. Some get $15,000 or more. Yet many mope through the job, bumping guests in their way without apology, with the attitude: "I'm just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls." They must cover equipment and film-development costs. Still, many in major metropolitan areas who shoot two weddings each weekend in the May-to-October marrying season pull in $100,000 for six months' work. Yet let's face it; much of their work is mediocre. Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds? Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon they're not, but some charge fees as if they're in the same league. 9) Pilots for major airlines Captains with 12 years of experience earn up to $265 an hour at Delta, United, American and Northwest, which translates to $250,000 a year and more for a job that technology is making almost fully automated. By comparison, senior pilots at low-fare carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue make about 40 percent less. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The pilot's union is the most powerful in the industry. It commands premium wages as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. Because we entrust our lives to them, consumers accept the excessive sums paid them, when it's airplane mechanics who really hold our fate in their hands. 8) West Coast longshoremen In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money. Next year, West Coast dockworkers will earn an average of $112,000 for handling cargo, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, their employer. Office clerks who log shipping records into computers will earn $136,000. And unionized foremen who oversee the rank-and-file will pull dow
Paying those ass-clowns *anything* is overpaying.
alwayson.com is not....anymore.
(nt)
Most overpaid job #11 - Slashdot Editor
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
hopefully one of the first three people to view the site thought to mirror the content for the rest of us here...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It appears that only 1 minute after this story was posted to the masses, the site hosting the article has already been downed due to the Slashdot effect. You darn wankers, you are like a virus that brings down unprepared sites on the web. I want to read the article, could the rest of you please stop for a few minutes? Thank you very much.
Oh well, it's much more fun to speculate.
...given the current slashdotting.
= 14 77_0_7_0_C
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id
Not A Sig
Heaven forbid that we just list the 10 things on slashdot... guess that would be asking too much.
Is it too late to nominate human resource consultant to the list?
First poster!
Huh? First Poster is the most overpaid job? That's news to me, I thought the pay was pretty lousy. Which is a pity, since /. would clearly disintegrate without the terrific work of those unsung heroes, the First Post ACs.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
#1 web administrator of www.alwayson-network.com
/.
#2 slashdot reader who spend all day reloading
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=14 77_0_7_0_C
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Uh huh - Always on...
The site was down before the first post hit ./!
That's got to be some kind of record.
They get paid?
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/. story poster...
I can see the first poster as being most over moderated job.
Well, until some karma whore or AC posts the article text, I'll have to make my own list of overpaid jobs. Ready?
- Actor/actress
- Politician
- Sport player
- Hardware reviewer (in any case where $pay > 0)
- Supermodel dressing room attendant
Anyone else have more?everything in moderation
This article seems slashdotted, but there's a similar (same?) article on the CBS site: Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S. .
Also, check a search on Google News
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Arrg.. They be slashdotted there mattey.
Even though its not "talk like a pirate day", it still beats talking like a landlubber.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
WebAdmin for alwayson-network.com!
This answers the most import question of all; Why don't /.ers read articles? Well, you need to be able to reach it to read it.
RRS, aka The Notorious BOB
www.notoriousbob.co.nr
Looks like the always-on network just became the always-off network
OpenOffice tips:richhillsoftware.com
No such thing as "overpaid". If someone is
willing to pay it and some body's willing to
supply it. It's a fair price.
...Compensation Expert.
Might be over paid. :^)
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1016490/posts#g gviewer-offsite-nav-8991256
I work for an architecture firm that handles airport noise mitigation projects. and I'ved worked with several municipalities with regards to differnt programs accross the country. The majority of these programs are federally funded. I recently saw a job opening for a program director assistant type position paying over 80k a year. For someone not knowing the real requirments of the Job it may sound intence but the job is so easy and so useless. It blows my mind to see how over paid public servants are in the US it is crazy. Not only that but how many uneccessary jobs are created in adminitrative positions. Another area is State education systems and the amount of money paid to administrative professionals when teachers are in short supply and classrooms are under equipped.
It's all relative. In their economy they might be thought of as overpaid by most of the population. Most folks I talk to think most computer people are overpaid (since it's such an easy job!)
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1016490/posts
10) Wedding photographers
9) Pilots for major airlines
8) West Coast longshoremen
7) Airport skycaps
6) Real estate agents selling high-end homes
5) Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on lecture circuit
4) Orthodontists
3) CEOs of poorly performing companies
2) Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts
1) Mutual-fund managers
Whatever job *you* have-
*You*, who are reading this and responding.
You are overpaid. You spend your day reading Slashdot. Get back to work.
You know the one responsible for editing, spelling, grammar, and checking for dups...
though it should would be great if i was.
i'm making less then $12/hr as a (linux) systems administrator and web programmer (cold fusion)
anyone willing to pay me $30k/yr(plus some benifits) for doing one or the other can get me eaily.
Here's the list.
#1 - Professional Athletes
#2 - CEO
#3 - CTO
#4 - CIO
#5 - Chairman of the board
#6 - Generic Executives
#7 - CEO
#8 - CEO
#9 - Guys at think tanks that produce articles like this
#10 - CEO
is down...'nuff said.
You gotta be fscking kidding. Did the HR consultants and executive headhunters point out that their own astronomical salaries can't be explained by anyone? Anyone that is, except for other HR consultants and executive headhunters...
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
alwayson-network.com is a wonderfully ironic name for a webserver that just got slashdotted...
Thomas Galvin
Seriously, since when is it new that there a cushy, overpaid jobs out there? For many, you need to get lucky or know someone to get them, for others, you need to undergo a long training program followed by many years of totem pole climbing.
People will pay whatever they think you're worth. Athletes get such high salaries because they bring in so much money for the owners.
If they didn't have high salaries then they'd up like music artists, where the labels get rich and the artists gets ripped off.
...it's the grocery store employees, at least that's what the Von's CEO wants everyone to beleive.
I would have thought that "Microsoft O/S Security Assurance Specialist" would have made the list. No ?
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
Google cache
Not his direct salary, but the private jet they bought him and the (unaccounted) stock options. $100s of millions, and they've pretty much brokent even over the last few years, with no significant market growth in anything other than iPods.
Bill's a great discount of a CEO when you consider their profitability and market size. Stevie's raking it in while AAPL investors get pooched.
Quote
End quote
Interesting that he doesn't even consider that SOME (not all) photographers just MIGHT actually be over paid.
.sig
'Fair compensation' is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.'"
These "human resouirce consultants" and "headhunters" are the overpaid morons!
The bit about the wedding photographer sounds like he had some grudge against his (or his daughter's) photographer. Whine whine whine.
If you hire a bargain-basement photographer's assistant, you might get stunning Annie-Liebowicz-level artwork. But the chances are that you'll get fifty images that are ill-timed, ill-posed, ill-conceived, ill-focused or ill-processed. You pay the money to someone who will get the best possible angle on the critical moments that the wedding couple will want to remember for the rest of their lives. Sometimes that requires a nudge to move Aunt Marge out of the way. It's not an occasion you're going to want to repeat if the photographer got it all wrong.
The same goes for an airline pilot... think about all the training you're depending on. Sure, it's "routine" to fly from coast to coast, but emergencies happen and it's the pilot's experience and training that you're paying for. It's a little late to complain that you didn't get your money's worth, once you've landed safe and sound after a boring flight.
[
FreePublic.com has a copy as well check here: http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1016490/posts
I don't expect "compensation experts" to be Ayn Rand obsessives, but they ought to at least have a basic notion of supply and demand. If supply and demand doesn't explain why some real estate salespeople make fortunes while most don't, what on earth does? Some Realtor Illuminati conspiracy to offer certain people salaries that are higher than "fair"?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
13) uninquisitive journalists
12) executive head hunters,
11) compensation experts,
OK, I get harshing on most of the others, but c'mon, skycaps? Let's smack down a bunch of guys who make $30k a year standing in the exhaust-drenched air at airport dropoff points, dealing with irate travellers, lugging overpacked suitcases around to the cries of 'Be careful with that!'...so they make tips, too--you think the surly, don't-give-a-damn ones are the ones raking in $300/day in tips? Right.
Saying it takes less brains than stuffing fast food in a bag is rather insulting to skycaps, too--does this guy honestly think that a skycap can just kinda traipse around with a cart full of luggage, darned if he cares what happens to it? (This even without taking the crazy new security measures into account--I'm sure that makes their jobs oh-so-easy these days...)
Pro atheletes? Sure. High-end real estate agents? Yep. Skycaps? That's...kinda reaching for a top ten list...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
clicky clicky!
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
"Compensation Expert"--I mean, what the hell is one of these? What's the average salary of a "Compensation Expert?"
Methinks there's a plot here to take our collective attention away from the truly overpaid.
sysadms are trying to get servers back while marketing is rethinking name change to "mostlyalwayson-network"
The very concept of overpaid is ignorant...it's a free market...value perceived or real is compensated. There is no such thing as overpaid.
Unless you have evidence of some sort of illegal activity, it's simply impossible to be "overpaid". A worker gets paid what someone is willing to pay him. Period.
This talk of what's "deserved" for one's work is blatantly leftist. Who's going to say what's "deserved"? By what standard?
Arrr!
Since the airlines have had financial problems, a lot of routes have been shifted to budget airlines - these airlines, I believe, have less restrictive flight rules (pilots fly more) while paying significantly less. In addition, pilots (and air traffic controllers) are in some of the highest stress jobs around - at least if a bus gets in an accident, you can jump off, an option not usually available to airline passengers.
and 2? Yes, they're overpaid, but why were they signed to those deals in the first place? In football (the NFL), the ability to negate contracts makes long-term deals (even for washed-up athletes) reasonable - if the athletes do well, the contract probably is financially OK, and if they do badly, they can be cut. In other sports, most high-money deals involve the stupidity of the owners in addition to the greed of the players. This is particularly true with the biggest contracts (for example, Alex Rodriguez got his 12 year, $252M contract by getting Tom Hicks to bid against himself and lose). In sports with guaranteed contracts, one would hope that the people making the contracts would take significant care in making long-term financial committments, but that is not necessarily true.
The real overpaid people in both of these cases are the people who made the bad business decisions that have caused these problems. Do you think airline CEO's aren't getting paid a lot to complain to Congress and squeeze their employees? Sports franchise owners at least put their money on the line, only to forget everything they knew about business once they do so.
heh
"Nothing is impossible for the man who refuses to listen to reason"
Then you do it. ;-) Just like any specialized job that requires cross field knowlege to perform, programmers are paid well.
10) Wedding photographers
Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding
I went to a wedding over the weekend. The cheapest price they could find for a wedding photographer was $1200 in the Houston area. They didn't want to pay that so they got the UH school paper photographer to come and do it for $200!
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I like Slashdot, I really do. However, it seems that a lot of articles are just introductions to something someone else wrote about altogether. You get a glimpse of what the article is about, then a link to it on another site. Then you follow this link on this poor tiny little server that gets flooded with thousands of http requests from Slashdot readers. The server gets knocked offline because the bandwidth consumption acts as a denial of service attack. Instead of just posting these links on Slashdot, perhaps you should get permition from the original site to link there first? Maybe even get permition to copy the article and post it here? Perhaps even be as nice as to get permission to copy the article, then host it on your own server instead? I am not trying to start a fight with anyone, I am just giving my humble opinions like everyone else does. I am not telling anyone to do anything at all except think about what I have said. Try to understand what the owner of that server is going through when they get Slashdotted.
.
where "SCO Lawyer" fits in amongst these Top 10?
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
http://slashddos.org
One glaring omission: operators/'editors' of popular internet sites. A certain one has maintainers/editors who:
ignore user requests
play games all day
don't 'edit' anything
don't read submissions
don't read their own site
don't properly test proposed site changes
offend and namecall users
No specific sites in mind
(goodbye karma...)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
They ignored how pilots actually get paid. It is based ENTIRELY on length of service with their current airline. When they start. it is around $13,000 a year (yes, really). And don't forget they often have to pay back for flight school. The longer they serve, they more they get paid as they move up ("seniority"). Their career can be instantly over failing the six month physical/medical. And that isn't failing like ordinary folk would. The health standards are significantly higher. Oh, and if they have to leave an airline while earning $250,000 a year and start at another, they really do start at $13,000.
The pay is definitely broken, but it isn't really apparent how to fix it. If they were paid on timely arrivals or lack of crashes, then there would be an incentive to buck the system to improve those in dangerous ways. They can hardly be blamed for maintenance, weather, in flight emergencies with passengers or any other "performance related" means. So seniority/length of service it remains.
So why do pilots fight so hard for their pay. Simple. When you have been making $13,000 a year and growing slowly until you eventually hit bigger numbers many decades later, you feel like you have earned it. And all the pilots who have put in a decade at low pay don't want the future rewards they have sacrificed for taken away. You should also be aware that very few pilots earn those big bucks.
Check out the series of articles "Ask the Pilot" on Salon which goes into way more detail. Quite frankly you would be insane to become a pilot for the money.
I guess the alwayson-network isn't always on...
or does the article read more as if inspired by pettiness than objective insight?
if systems administrator is on that list i'll kick someone.
then again, based on the work some of my friends put into their sysadmin jobs, its very plausible...
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
It's no suprise that IT pros or tech support folks aren't on that list, it's never fun being the red headded stepson of a company..
8) West Coast longshoremen
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Maybe they make too much money. But ports shut down because of a lock-out, not a strike. Everyone that writes about this and wants to paint them in a bad light casually fails to mention that. If the Pacific Maritime Association feels that the Longshoremen's Union has too much of a stranglehold on the ports, perhaps they should consider that the PMA has too much of a stranglehold on the ports. Monopolies suck. Amen. One monopoly has managed to take money from the other monopoly. You think consumer prices would fall if the PMA managed to break the union?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
They should rename that article to "Must Have Jobs of 2003." And who cares if they're overpaid, its not like they themselves are the ones paying those huge salaries. If somebody is willing to pay me that much, do you really think I'd say no? Heck no!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
-matt
"Overpaid" is an opinion. This article acts as if "overpaid" can be objectively defined. You may not think sports stars are worth it (hey, I sure don't), but apparently everyone else does and is voting with their dollars. If you want these people's salaries to be "corrected," you're going to have to sway public opinion.
Honestly, I'm so tired of reading articles by people who never understood the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve.
Great reading on the subject from Walter Williams.
I don't think the sports stars should make that much money. Sometimes I even resent them. But for me to decree that they're "overpaid" means I think I have the right to prohibit thousands of people from purchasing sports tickets. I don't have the right to that kind of control over people's lives any more than I have the right to choose their religion.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Salaries of College Presidents Rising
a p/ 20031110/ap_on_re_us/college_presidents
2 hours, 25 minutes ago
Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By STEVE GIEGERICH, AP Education Writer
While tuition costs keep on rising, so do the salaries of college presidents.
A survey of college presidential salaries revealed Monday that the compensation packages given the leaders of four private universities in the 2002 fiscal year topped $800,000.
The Chronicle of Higher Education's annual salary report also said that the top officials at 12 public schools are scheduled to earn more than $500,000 in 2003-04.
With an annual package of salary and benefits totaling $891,400, Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., was the top earner among college presidents last year, the Chronicle said.
The Chronicle said that doesn't include Jackson's compensation for serving on eight corporate boards, which adds an additional $591,000 to her annual income.
Closely behind Jackson on the list of top earners among private school presidents were Gordon Gee, the president of Vanderbilt University in Nashville ($852,000), the University of Pennsylvania's Judith Rodin ($845,474) and Arnold Levine of Rockefeller University ($844,600), who has since resigned for health reasons.
The Chronicle said the $677,500 that will be paid in salary and benefits in 2003-04 to the University of Michigan's Mary Sue Coleman puts her atop the list of public institution leaders.
Coleman is followed on the public schools list by University of Delaware President David Roselle, who will earn $630,654 this academic year and Richard McCormick, who will receive $625,000 to head New Jersey's Rutgers University.
During the 2001-02 fiscal year, the Chronicle said, the chief executives of 27 private schools received compensation in excess of $500,000.
David Harpool, the president of Argosy University in Chicago, criticized college boards that approve exorbitant salaries for their presidents while saddling students with tuition increases topping 10 percent.
"We don't apply any common sense business principles to these decisions," said Harpool, the author of "Survivor College," a book that criticizes nonessential spending on college campuses.
The Chronicle compiles its data on the salaries paid the presidents of private institutions by reviewing nonprofit tax forms filed last year by each school. The current salaries of state college and university presidents are determined by reviewing both nonprofit tax forms and the public budgets filed by each institution.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/
John Kerry is a Joke!
my colleague just asked to be demoted from systems programmer level 3 to level 2 being he think he's overpaid... :P
I think it is important to point out that the article does not criticize athletes high pay in general, but more specifically players with long-term contracts that under perform. Their examples are an NBA player and a MLB player. I want to point out that contracts in the NBA and MLB are guaranteed. That means if the player gets hurt, or just doesn't perform the team still has to pay them the entire contract. So even if you fire Shawn Kemp you have to pay him the $100 million. Now contrast that with the NFL, the league with the highest chance of career ending injuries. NFL contracts are not guaranteed. If you are cut by a team you are only guaranteed that years money, if after the roster deadline, and your signing bonus.
"...as fast as an elk bear..."
What the heck is an elk bear?
Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds?
It takes more than just snapping photos to be a wedding photographer. It's like being a drummer: Do your job well and no one will notice, but mess up and you'll catch hell. I guarantee you can tell the difference between a professional wedding photographer's photographs and some doofus with a disposable. Wedding Photographers are also not only working against the clock, but they only get one day.
Articles like these with the lack of repsect for profession's intricacies as are borderline offensive. Just because the author doesn't see what the big deal is is no reason to bash it.
Slashdot Editor?
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Slightly worrying for a site called the "always on network"...
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
the always-on.com domain isn't...
At any salary, how did porn actress auditioner not make the freakin' list?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
The gap between top and bottom salaries is at a historic all time high. The powerful simply bent the rules so they gain more than their fair share at the expense of all of the rest of us. This cripples our economy as it's a clear disincentive to labor. At the current rate of mismanagement, it surely won't be too long before the whole rotten house of cards collapses again. Excessive affluence is a sure sign of a corrupt society and I, for one, wish there was even some justice in America. Really, the real enemy isn't overseas, they inhabit the top floors of our institutions.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Barring superstar athletes and media personalities, because they are obviously the most grossly overpaid citizens, I would say lawyers, mutual fund managers, and CEOs are the most undeserving, overpaid people in the world. Everyone knows that companies make most of their money on the efforts of under-appreciated engineers and scientists. Writing a few peices of usefull code or solving a new problem makes tons more money than the hundreds of strategic 'planning' meetings that middle and upper management are always in, mostly for the purpose of justifying their positions. Engineers and R&D people are the most underpaid. Them and Wallmart employees. I truly feel for them. At the rate things are going, I am seriously considering applying for work at a shipping port. I don't mind a little physical labor, especially at those pay rates. The other most underpaid folks around are military grunts. The infantry put their asses on the line for about $18k per year. This looks good until you are deployed to a desert for 12+ months. The govt' gives way too much money to the likes of DynCorp and Haliburton, most of the time they don't know what they are getting for the money.
TallGreen CMS hosting
to see Longshoremen on the list. My dad had many friends who became longshoremen, and yes the money was really good. And my uncle happens to manage a stevedoring (ship un/docking, moving of goods) company. But these people deserve the good money. They have to ship out many thousands of tons of lumber to foreign countries, the best example, Japan. It's a pretty dangerous job, unlike what the article happens to say. And it's not easy to become a longshoreman. If you're related to someone who's in the business, your chance skyrockets. It's like a family business that happens to pay really well.
I don't think top airline pilots are overpaid.
Consider the fact that their 'off' hours are usually away from home. There is a LOT of work that they do outside of flying. This doesn't count in their per-hour charge.
They spend a lot of time gaining hours in small aircraft and as co-pilots of large aircraft. And they get dirt-pay for that.
They can't drink 12 hours before going on the job.
They work odd hours.
They are controlling a big gas tank with an aluminum shell and 300 people inside, all while moving 600+ mph in weather conditions that prevent you from seeing out side.
Yea, I want a good incentive for the pilot up front in my aircraft. I want to get to my destination!
I do not buy the skycap. Where do you get 18 passengers per hour? Many shot-term business travellers prefer to carry-on luggage. Families with more luggage are often budget concious and do not use the service. Where does that 18 come from?
Barbara Streisand Katie Couric Terry McAuliffe Clinton (both Hillary and Bill) Tim Robbins Sean Penn Arianna Huffington Dan Rather Ted Turner
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Forwarding this article along with a picture of ole Chris Plummer to Local 1006 Skycaps Union. HA! This guy is never going to arrive at his destination with his luggage again.
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Connection was to www.alwayson-network.com at port 80
alwayson-network.com???
Not anymore!
Those servers who have not studied the slashdot effect are doomed to repeat it
I'm a wedding photographer (#10 on the list).
They're right and they're wrong. First, you can spend as little or as much on a wedding photographer as you want. I know people who will show up for $300, shoot a few dozen rolls of film and hand them to the bride and groom on the way out the door. Will there be some good photos? Maybe, but you can expect an awful lot of crap.
On the other hand, when my wife and I shoot a wedding, we make every photo a work of art: color correct, crop, edit, retouch, black and white, sepia, hand tinting, etc etc etc. Then we design a one of a kind album. This is not a "weekend" job. We spend probably about 3 hours before the wedding going over details and meeting with the couple, an entire day at the wedding (getting ready through the reception), and then about 40 to 50 hours the next week processing all the photos. Oh, and we also have to pay for our $40,000 of photo equipment, lights, computers, etc etc, not to mention all the rest of the stuff that goes along with running a business. Advertising, office space and supplies, promotional materials, phone line, fax line, internet, website, etc. Then, since we're working for ourselves, we have to provide our own benefits, so we're paying our own health insurance, and providing for our own retirement. Oh, and there ain't no two week's paid vacation, either.
With the advent of digital imaging, the technical aspects of photography have increased many times over. I've actually got a Master's degree in electrical and computer engineering. These days, you have to be an artist, an engineer, and oh, yeah a businessman, too. Good luck finding somebody to do all that for $300.
By the way, if you'd like to see our work (or need a photographer!) you can check out our website.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Since pro-athletes are entertainers, we might as will lump TV-sitcom prima-donnas in their final season. :-)
Wedding photographer.
Surely the most overpaid job in the world is supermodel photographer.
I would gladly do the job for ten grand, so long as I can pay in instalments...
Advertising corrupts anything it touches. (Just look at professional baseball or pop music for prime examples.)
Come on... you're on slashdot... the BEST example here would be the effect it has had on email.
This is not my sig.
Wedding photographers may be overpaid, but equipment and printing costs are also rather high. Consider that the Zeiss lenses for Hassleblads can cost up to $3000, and 8x10 prints at a professional photo lab will be around $30 each, more for custom prints. It must all add up pretty quickly.
Also consider the stress involved on the day and the required mix of technical and people skills involved. Certainly not an easy job to do well.
come on you dipshits this is funny!!!
disclaimer: I only know this because at my uni the dept of computer science is for some stupid reason in the school of aerospace sciences.
Lots of kids come in going for a commerical aviation degree dreaming of making a quarter mil a year. The reality? For the ones lucky enough to get a job out of college it's flying some puddle jumping prop for less than $20,000 a year. The guys making the huge money are flying the big jets, and they only get to do that because they have an insane amount of flight hours. Know who is able to rack up insane amount of flight hours (it's expensive)? That's right, retired air force pilots.
Experience can demand that kind of money because that experience is expensive/difficult to get in the first place.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
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Thats more or less how miles per hour is. stupid dumbass lbs and quarts and feet and inches and worst of them all - mills.
yucckkk.
This is one guy's opinion. There was no survey, no quantative data, nothing.
It sounds like he came up with a list of jobs he thought were overpaid, called a couple HR people to validate his biases, then wrote the article. This is not news.
I can't believe Slashdot Editor isn't on there.
paintball
Remove jobs that dozens of people have instead ones that thousands of people have - pilots, motivational speakers, CEO's, athletes, and mutal fund managers. Then which occupations replace them on this lst?
Has it ever occured to you that we - in the first world[*] - are possibly hugely overpaid?
... what if?
At least when I think of people working 14h days in sweatshops just to "not starve" I suddenly shiver at the thought of what my life would be like if wealth was evenly distributed.
I know, we do have lots of options to expand total human wealth[**], so it's not a zero-sum game but still
[*] I assume most slashdotters are from "developed" countries.
[**] E.g. not killing, maiming and robbing each other
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The idea of overpayment is an issue only if there is inequity.
One American individual (guess who) is worth as much as the bottom 40% of the population (120 million people).
The top 1% of the American population has more wealth than the bottom 95%.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
How about the doctors that kill people by negligence? Hundreds of people are killed by negligent doctors every week.
What makes the nightly news? A pair of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Some doctors are worth their income. Others are not. I'd love to see a rating system on doctors. How many patients have you had die? What were the causes?
Yet nothing is done. Investigations are meaningless. Other doctors consistently protect their own. Insurance companies abide by the practice, they don't want to pay the malpractice awards.
-- No sig for you!
This is why estate taxes originally came about. The government was extremely worried that a de-facto aristocracy would form out of the money that Industrialists were accumulating. So in order to prevent assets from endlessly collecting interest, they decreed that a large percentage of an individual's wealth would return to society upon death. This would also ensure that, at some point, SOMEone would have to work to bring more money in. Not exactly what one would call a fair system, but since Rockefellers and Kennedys do not own GE and Microsoft today, I would have to call it a partial success.
Now just recently estate taxes were repealed by the fiscal conservatives. Will this finally tip the scale to the point where wealth can endlessly create more wealth, so meritous, hard-working individuals like Ally Hilfiger can entertain us with their priviledge? Our children will find out!
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Where the hell are the politicians on this list?
Scew the ex's on lecture circuits. Where are the idiots getting paid to ruin America?
Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out Al Gore's recent speech on Freedom and Secutity (http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech.html).
6. anyone on the European Community payroll... the joke goes that they add up the average wages for a given position in each of the member countries, to arrive at the sum to be paid to EC workers. And they make that tax-free... a serious benefit in a region where 40% income tax is considered normal.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Everyone making over $100,000 per year!
"alwayson-network". There's just something wrong about a machine posted on slashdot by that name.
This sig no verb.
Not quite true. All comerical pilots are required by the FAA to fly no more than 40 hours a month. This doesn't mean that they can't do other work for the airline but I think that is pretty rare. Although it would be funny to see pilots loading and unloading bagage to work something closer to 160 hours a month.
Slashdot story editors.
This message has been scanned for memes and dangerous content by MindScanner, and is believed to be unclean.
As much as we hate to admit it, a great smile is one of the first things people notice about you. Ever see someone and think they're kinda cute and when they smile, their teeth look like Austin Powers'? Or they're missing? Sure, they charge a lot now, but consider it an investment in your child's (or your's) future.
:)
Personally, I think boob-job plastic surgeons are overpaid. Hell, play with different women's boobs all day for free!
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
np ..
so the players might as well get something out of it.
Players aren't competing for salary with school
teachers. They divy up the proceeds from the revenue they generate with the owners, many of whom did nothing more amazing than survive the trip down the birth canal. Let them get all they can, and bless 'em for it. What the players don't get, the owners keep.
It's the "Always-on Network", not the "Always-able-to-serve-pages Network".
paintball
don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk anyone else think it is funny that a site with that name got slashdotted so quick?
Do you ever get dizzy from up there on your high horse?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I know you "mean well" and all with your utopian plans of providing for the homeless and eduction but unfortunately due to the fact that we're HUMANS that means we need to arrainge our economies in a capitalist fashion.
We could try socialism but obvious examples have already demonstrated the sheer humanitarian horror that that produced.
And where do you get off telling someone that going outside and pretending to be as good at sports as a pro is would be enjoyable? Why put your body at risk of injury when you can watch others play a game better than you'd ever be able to? Don't you think thats a bit condescending?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
You cannot begin to count the number of 100K+ employees the Federal and State Governments have. Worse are the costs associated with their pensions, which is would turn the stomach of most people if they knew about it.
To top it off, if those pension funds lose money because of bad investments the public must pay into the fund via their taxes to make up the difference (recent case in Virigina proved that one)
Compare school administrators to teachers. We have a number of 120K jobs in one school district, and not one is a teaching job.
Sorry, I don't care where a business wastes it money, they have to earn it back. There should be no condemnation of highly paid businessmen provided it does not occur through fraud or account tricks. If we don't like it we can just not buy from that company. The same isn't true of the government.
They made a point about longshoreman in California, but missed out on recent changes by Gray Davis to public servants that makes that pay not look overly obscene.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
from the article:
6) Real estate agents selling high-end homes
6a would be "Real estate agents renting apartments in New York". (replace New York with your very own favorite high cost of living city)
The "Broker Fees" are absolutely rediculous for the amount of work they might put in. Mine was $750 on a $900 apartment, only because I talked her down from $900 in fees. Then, the one thing they have to do, they make you pay for again, the $25 for a credit report. Why isn't that included? So for the 2 hours max that I spent with her, signing paperwork and showing the apartment she brings in $750. Typical Broker Fees are like 12% of your anual rent I think. They don't do shit to deserve it.
Meant to distract readers from the fact that they don't have jobs!. Film at 11!
Are you guys kiddig me? Look, the truth of the matter is that nearly all CEO's who are getting more than $1/2 Mil each year are grossly overpaid! And that's just about all of them! Next are all the wonderful Demicrooks and RepubliCONS in CONgress. They are all basically in the deep pockets of the cheating and lying CEO's! and don't give a rip who they cheat or steal from nor who they are lying to as long as they have their campagin warchests filled up to stay in office. If the middle class collapses in this country, and there are signs that they are based on economic control and whose got it and wealth distribution, something gonna blow up really big! (IMHO).
Instead of complaining about how someone is overpaid, complain instead about how you are underpaid.
1. Many washed up atheletes were underpaid in their prime. Their getting paid more at the end of their careers is just rewards for previous stellar performance. Plus, they sell seats in the stadium.
2. Consumerism is excellent. In a perfect world, we compete to see who builds the best, not destroys the most. There's no middle ground. The best judge of who built the best is, tada, the consumer.
3. Throwing a ball a precisely as an NFL Quarterback does is extremely hard. If, football were as mindless of a game as you say, you would have no problem receiving a play, analyzing various defenses, deciding which receiver is most likely to be open, all while trying to avoid nearly 2000 lbs of humans intent on your injury. If you could do all of that, in under 2 seconds, then yes, you would be worth 20 million a year and you would not be underpaid.
4. Most NFL players have college degrees, and, many have degrees in hard engineering fields.
Bottom line. NFL Players are smart, and good at what they do. If you ever talked to a pro player, and I have, you would probably find their analysis of a particular play is remarkably in depth.
This is my sig.
Two Words, Remedy Administrator!
Ever notice that most of these "OVerpaid" jobs require working lots of off hours and often weekends.
I used to work with a photographer to shoot wedings, giving up every fri/ saturday night from may... sept is not fun. Thats why I got a regular job. Also thank goodness she dealt with most of the clients. People are a pain because noone is a pretty as they think they are. Also pro labs are $$$.
5) Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on lecture circuit
It's illegal to pay politicians large sums of money for favors while they are in office. You give them the money after they leave. It's delayed payment.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
American congressman!
$154,700 per year
$166,700 for leaders
$192,600 for speaker
Oh, wait, they just voted to increase their salary to $158,000 next year. Wish I could do that.
Also of note, the president makes $400,000 a year.
No, I'm New Here
1. President of the USA
2. Congressmen
3. Senators
4. Mayors
5. Generals
6. Anyone working at the IRS
7. Anyone working at the DMV
8. Anyone working at the US Post Office
9. Anyone working at the US Patent Office
10. Anyone working in the "Department of Defense"
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
... While most agents hustle tail to earn $60,000 a year, those in affluent areas can pull down $200,000-plus for half the effort....
... if you wouldn't trust a decorator who didn't have the taste of your class, why would you trust a real estate agent? A realtor who acts like a used-car salesperson is not going to make it at the high end; having the same taste as the people you're helping find a home is essential to guiding them well.
Luxury home agents live off the economy's fat, yet many put on airs as if they're members of the class whose homes they're selling, and eye underdressed open-house visitors as if they're casing the joint.
Hello? Luxury home agents are members of the class whose homes they're selling, or within a step or two of it. And that class as a whole lives off the economy's fat. For the most part, people want to hire professionals who are of their class or better. That especially applies where fashion and taste are concerned. Decorators, landscape designers, architects
I don't much like realtors, and don't much hold by class, but I'm sure willing to see the realtor get a fee in proportion to the home I'm buying to avoid be steered towards the sort of place that would most appeal to trailor trash with the sales tactics appropriate thereto.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'm collecting unemployment. Typical day includes sleeping till 3pm them playing Allied Assault for a few hours.
I fully expected hack writers to be in the list somewhere. You know, the ones that cannot come up a creative idea to save their life, or actually bring themselves to leave their office and do research. They would rather just look at the same old books and magazines that have lined their office since 1970 and find all article to repurpose. Alternatively, they to come up random lists and format them into something resembling an article.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
These people get paid well, but they do have to work their butt off for it.
There is little to no job security, and benefits have to be paid for out of your cut.
A good agent gets about 5% of a sale (10% if they represent buyer and seller - hard to pull off). Sure, that's $300k on an average house in Concord, Mass - but of that money 40-60% (depending on volume) goes to the office. That leaves ~$150k which represents anything up to a year of uncertainty and hard work dealing with really hard to please clients. (Naturally people in the $3m price range are bitchy perfectionists.)
You face the prospect of your listings getting yanked or poached at any time up to the last second, and investements in things like brocures and out of state listings (many thousands of dollars for really big properties) getting smoked. You need excellent people skills to deal with customers (and other brokers), and you need to be available 24 hours a day, even on weekends and holidays.
An aquaintance of mine managed to close a $9m house last year acting for the buyer and seller - and yeah, everyone was jelous of her. It certainly was a big pay day, but it reperesented a lot of work that could easily have ended up getting her nothing at all. Highly paid? When you get lucky... but it's compensation for the risk and talent involved.
Beep beep.
1) Football is cheap.
Engineering advances pay way more than sports teams. The top most salary of an NFL player is probably 20 million dollars a year. Conversely, an engineer that strikes it stinking rich can dozens if not hundreds of times that. Marc Andreseen was worth, at one time, more than all of the NFL, as is Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, Bill Gates, and so on. Doctors that start their own research companies these days can make billions of dollars, and they do.
2) If you want your local emergency services to make more money, vote for a property tax increase in your community. Organize a drive to give your police and firefighters and EMTs a real wage. If you want your stay at home wife to live like a queen, go out and get some dough for her. Start your own company, devote your life to a goal, and make something with your life, like an NFL Player did.
3) We spend way more money on medicine and medical research than we do on the NFL. The Health care industry is hundreds of billions of dollars, the NFL is only ten.
The moral of the story is that, dollar for dollar, we do care more about advancing science and curing diseases. However, some of us think that there is more to life than just chasing disease.
For us, the NFL is an on field play of life, each game a miniature drama of competitive instinct and human ingenuity. There are so many small battles, tactics, and individual tests in each NFL game, that there is something for everyone to latch onto of interest and most people do. Watch a game once, before you laugh at it, and, appreciate just how good these people really are at what they do. I'll bet you the EMTs will.
PS. Donovan McNabb is no thug, and, he's going to throw for 300 yards tonight and kick the tar out of Green Bay!
LETS GO EAGLES LETS GO!
This is my sig.
Somewhere there ought to be a comparable list: jobs you assume are worked by well-heeled professionals, but that are actually basically full of blue collar people who're doing it for other reasons. Pilots are there because they like the work. It sure as heck isn't the money. Paramedics -- you think they're in it for the money? They get hardly anything for the job they do, those people are in it for something else.
(I'd rather read my imaginary article, frankly. This one's just a bitchy, demeaning piece of pop tabloid crap.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In a market system, by definition people are worth exactly what they are able to convince someone to pay them. Let me explain further...
Corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money for their shareholders. They do this in one of two ways: 1) paying dividends and 2) increasing stock price. Shareholders elect a Board of Directors for the purpose of supervising the corporation on their behalf. Among other tasks, the Board of Directors hires the CEO and other senior management.
With every candidate for CEO, the Board has to make a prediction. If candidate A only costs $10 million but the market will react to the hiring in a neutral manner, whereas candidate B costs $700 million but the market will bid up the price of the stock by $5 per share, then candidate B is clearly the candidate the Board must hire. To do otherwise would be to not live up to their responsibilities to the shareholders.
The amount of money involved is staggering, but the shareholders could care less what the CEO makes. The shareholders only care about the value of their own portfolio.
20k minimum for setting up a network of harddrives.
is it an African Elk or a European Elk?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
In a strictly economic sense, the normal supply and demand curve breaks down when there is percieved absolutely not enough supply to supply demand. Last year's and this coming spike in natural gas prices is a perfect example of that. Bottom line is, people panic and want and will pay anything to get it.
This is my sig.
Round one FIGHT
1 second
2 seconds
3 seconds
WHAP
*ding* *ding*
Slashdot wins by knockout!
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
He may not be the best choice for aging, washed up pro athlete. He did beat out teammate Greg Maddox for the Golden Glove award - something that Maddox had one 13 straight years; had a respectable 14 and 8 season, with a 3.84 ERA.
Ahem. AlwaysOnNetwork was the name of the Slashdotted website the article was referring to. Nobody would argue that Network Administrators who are always on call are underpaid... Mainly because they would stop buying us sushi if we did.
The ______ Agenda
Overpaid? The HR people I met that are "fun fun" for employees, organize paintball events, X-mas parties and receives resume they forward to the boss makes 30-55K.
I knew one incredible HR guy, good enough to do 200-350K; peanuts for what he did. He would be in a business 12 to 18 months, just long enough to 'clean-up'.
The clean-up varies from getting rid of non-productive workers, re-organize the floor plant or (a lot harder) to disperse the "drug selling union representatives" to the four corners of the factory at different shift/hours attempting to disrupt illegal activities. Believe it or not a known drug-dealer cannot be fired if properly unionized, worst if he is in the union top representatives. Attempting to do so usually brings your factory to a near halt by a series of mysterious incidents and incredible amount of union related paperwork.
I know of 2 jobs he did. In the first the business saved 1 Million on the first year alone, on the second the business saved 5M the first year. The third place the high direction (2000 miles away) decided to close the factory even if he wanted to re-organize it.
I never met an overpaid HR, exception of founders who after a few years where shelved under that title.
A player is worth money if he can "put fannies in the seats", regardless of his effect on wins and losses. This is why home run hitters get so much attention in baseball, even though the line drive hitter who rarely strikes out is more valuable as far as winning games.
The parent got modded Insightful??? Yeesh!
The powerful "bent the rules"? What rules? Is there some halcyon past in which everybody everywhere had equal opportunities and resources in life? Oh, guess not...
And I don't think our (I assume you mean USA) economy is "crippled", to any extent. Even the recent recession was one of the shortest and mildest on record. In terms of global economic growth, the US is the primary driver - Europe and Japan certainly aren't going anywhere fast, although an emerging China is making strong gains.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
...there no such thing as "overpaid". Just an opportunity looking for smart entrepreneurs. These simultaneously communicate the change in demand, relieve the pressure, and profit thereby. A win-win situation.
Only a forcibly rigged market can contain overpricing, due to somebody having a "guild monopoly". The Orthodontists mentioned are, I believe, an example of this.
BasharTeg has the biggest balls.
The longshoremen thing gets to me. I think these are some of the people I least want to be easily bribed. I'd rather they take home $120,000/year than be hurting for cash to the extent that somebody could slip them $20,000 to let a nuke slip through their port.
Plus making that much cash keeps them from stealing half the stuff coming off the boat. If I were running a business that depends on import/export I would be glad that the salary prevents mass shrink before the product hits shelves.
I think the salary is entirely appropriate. I think this article is a bunch of wankery.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
A lot of people are overpaid because there are certain things consumers just don't want screwed up," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com. "You wouldn't want to board a plane flown by a second-rate pilot
Actually allot of commercial pilots (yes people that fly the plane you go on) are paid surprisingly low wages. Infact in general all the people that do the jobs that we really need - firefighters, police, doctors/nurses/paramedics, teachers etc are paid very little.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The way they talk, anyone with a RE license could set up shop in a high-rent area and the money would start rolling in.
If it was that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it?
You can throw out a shingle anywhere, but to make money as a RE agent, you have to do one of two things... convince homeowners to let you sell your house or convince homebuyers to let you help them find and purchase a house. And the richer those people are, the richer the deals they're making, the more competition there is to get them to sign with you.
Knowing your way around the technical labyrinth of buying and selling houses is the easy part. That merely requires study, which anyone with a brain can do. But doing the networking, selling yourself as an expert, making the good impressions, having or developing the skills to read people, get them to like you, AND get them to trust you with handling megabuck deals for them... that takes serious skill and talent.
I'm not an RE agent. But I've sold high-ticket consumer goods on commission. It was one of the hardest jobs I've ever had. Dancing around with someone is easy, but closing them is a true skill, and to work the high-rent customers you have to be a great closer. If you're not, the other agents will eat you alive, because the more lucrative the market, the more cutthroat it is.
Go to an auto dealership, the ad sales department at a radio or TV station, a real estate agency... Ask any of those sales managers what a great closer is worth.
Go actually work as a commissioned salesperson, selling a high-ticket item for a month.
Then tell me if real estate agents are overpaid.
Sheesh.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Many DON'T take great pictures, they just take average. At my cousin's wedding the photographer was no more than average. She had some nice equipment and had the same skills as someone who had taken some photo classess in university but nothing exceptional. As an average good:bad ratio my mom got more using a basic Pentax 35mm with a normal lense. No, my mom isn't a professional photographer either.
We all certianly felt she overcharged, given the results. I mean we would have done just as well to go rent a couple of good cameras and give them to the people who know a bit about photography.
Here's the list. #1 - Professional Athletes #2 - CEO #3 - CTO #4 - CIO #5 - Chairman of the board #6 - Generic Executives #7 - CEO #8 - CEO #9 - Guys at think tanks that produce articles like this #10 - CEO me with him ^^^^^^^
National Football League players make their money in the signing bonus, once you're fired, the checks stop, immediately. Mark Chmura is no longer being paid.
Baseball is different. Those are no-cut deals. Who is that goofball that the Cleveland Indians gave a half BILLION to, Alejandro Colon Taco-Gobbler? He washed out 2 years ago after 3 so-so years, he's still getting paid.
I mean, come on. Don't buy into the hype. Why would you want someone with washboard like ribs and with no tits in your bed?
10) Wedding photographers
l
Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding, for what amounts to a one-day assignment plus processing time. Some get $15,000 or more. Yet many mope through the job, bumping guests in their way without apology, with the attitude: I'm just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls.
They must cover equipment and film-development costs. Still, many in major metropolitan areas who shoot two weddings each weekend in the May-to-October marrying season pull in $100,000 for six months' work.
Yet let's face it; much of their work is mediocre. Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds? Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon they're not, but some charge fees as if they're in the same league.
As a photographer, this complaint makes no sense to me. Start with the cost of the typical wedding $2000 to $5000 for photography...
Well the average cost for flowers is about $2000 (see here: http://www.letsgetmarried.com/flower2.html )
Here's a breakdown of wedding costs from http://www.toledoweddings.com/planner/budget2.htm
WEDDING CONSULTANT 10% Some charge a flat fee and others an hourly charge; however, the wedding consultant's fee can be as much as 10% of the wedding budget if they arrange your wedding from start to finish.
WEDDING DRESS 6% Today's wedding dress is usually white or ivory and accounts for approximately 6% of the wedding budget.
GROOM ATTIRE 1% The groom's wedding attire represents 1% of the wedding budget.
RECEPTION 37% The reception is the most expensive variable of the wedding and on average absorbs approximately 37% of the total budget.
FLOWERS 5% The average flower budget represents approximately 5% of the total wedding budget.
PHOTOGRAPHERS 6% The average cost of wedding photography represents approximately 6% of the wedding budget.
VIDEOGRAPHER 3% The cost of a professional videographer represents approximately 3% of the total wedding budget.
MUSIC 5% The music accounts for approximately 5% of the total wedding budget.
WEDDING RINGS 23% The wedding rings for the bride and groom, including the engagement and wedding bands average 23% of the total budget.
-----
Does photography provide 6% of the value of the wedding? What are your memories worth to you?
The price of ANYTHING is not an exclusive function of the underlying material costs... you have to consider the skills of the provider. Rude providers, and providers who produce crappy work, are obviuosly overpaid... and because there is very little repeat business there are information inefficiencies in the market for wedding photography... by the time you find out you've got a bad photographer it is too late to repeat the once in a lifetime event.
Yes that provides an incentive to make sure you get someone who doesn't make a mistake.... high prices can be used to (falsely) signal quality... "he charges a lot, he must be good, and we don't want a mistake on a once in a lifetime event."
But the bottom line is that it is hard to see why an average 6% of the total cost is inherently too high.
I doubt that wedding photographers are "overpaid" on average... if you've ever done it, you know there is a huge responsibility, a huge hassel, and it can't be described as "fun" in any sense.
The article describes problems of inconsistent quality I suppose, but the average wedding photographer is getting rich....
Besides you can always pay a really cheap photographer or ask your brother in law to do it.... Oh that doesn't sound so good does it?
Why not become a wedding night photographer... Fetish website potential...
$100k per year for a job doesn't seem outrageous, especially if you consider the equipment expenses they have, as well as the fact that they're picking up the tab for all the usual self-employment taxes.
Considering what self-absorbed harpies most brides are, the money alone should be worth it for just dealing with the customer base.
And besides, try to get $skilled_worker to come to $location at $fixed_time and do $job, correctly the first and only time it can be done, for less than $3000. Mostly it cannot be done.
If I had to surf at -1 sometimes, I'd demand that pay too ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Many of these jobs are NOT at the level a normal intersection would support. Many of teh union jobs are a good example, such as the dockworkers. There are people willing to do the work for less, but what's more there exists technology (used in many other countries) to significantly automate the process and reduce the number of employees needed. However any attempt to implemetn any of this leads to the unions creating problems, keeping the pay artifically high.
CEOs are another great example. Frequently a CEO will get in the position on account of inside connections, rather than level of actual skill. They then are able to get paid more than would be warranted (again, since you could find a person to do an equal or better job with equal or better skills for less money).
Basically I define a job as overpaid (or underpaid) when there is some artificial force keeping the pay from finding equilibrium. That is the case with many of the jobs listed in the article.
I'd like to throw Tycho from Penny Arcade in there, as well. Probably Gabe, too, although at least his job requires some kind of talent. But to make a full-time job out of writing and drawing three short strips a week (not even that if they're at a convention) and reporting on the video games you're playing! Maybe I'd be okay with it if they hadn't spent so much time bitching about micropayments and advertising click-throughs before they were making a living.
There are only about 3000 athletes globally who make a living at play, and that includes all the 10k a year suckers in AAA baseball, although the Rockford Illinois Expos are a lot of fun for the kids to watch.
Sports trainers and high school coaches do well, though. Is thechampion.net/com/org still online? Lists all Illinois school system salaries. ALL.
Actually, the money would be spent on accountants, tax attourneys and lobbyists to avoid the tax.
I know we all like to take jabs at these folks, and further the case of class-warfare. But the truth is, hereditary monarchs not being so popular in this country, we create some of this with our consumer habits. Pro athletes haul in the contracts because people give ratings to broadcast games, buy tickets to events, and buy team logo-ed merchandise like it was a necessity. The RIAA lawyers and pop stars cash in when you pay your $15-$20 for a CD. Talentless models turned "actor" build additions to their castles with the proceeds from that $10 movie ticket, and in some cases, Disney Corp. takes 50 per cent of the profit for doing essentially nothing. People continue to buy American-made autos, justifying Detroit's privileged with insanely wide profit margins (compared to foreign makers), even though Japanese-built vehicles have newer, better technology, last longer, and cost roughly the same. (Sorry, I'm stuck in the 80s - I had to take a pot-shot at Detroit since I've been royally screwed by their products in the past.)
It happens in many other market areas. Brand name foods, electrical appliances, retail clothing (I'm thinking chain stores, not manufacturers) and software to name a few more. It's almost the natural order of things. Boards approve obscene salaries for these people because it's simpler to look at the problem this way: Mr. X is at the helm, and we're becoming larger and more profitable. Mr. X is the reason we are profitable. We don't want to lose Mr. X, so we're going to make his pay and perks more attractive to keep competitive offers at bay. Salary inflation even happens in government, such as the case in my state, where Dept. of Children and Families workers now make more than workers in competing private services, (it's spurring a defection of workers to the government jobs).
As far as Americans being overpaid in general? I'm not CEO with a 7-digit salary, I'm a unionized government worker. Considering the size and budget of my employer, I'm overpaid. I live far beyond subsistence levels, and despite a divorce that's left me deep in debt, I'm not going to find myself living in a cardboard box behind Cumby's any time soon. I get a raise every year, regardless of my performance or the performance of the economy. Although I like getting a raise, and my workload has increased dramatically since my first day on the job, that really doesn't affect my cost of living. I also get a wicked good HMO for a ridiculously tiny deduction from my paycheck, as well as enough paid holidays and vacation time to fill a month. I could definitely stand to reduce the perks without affecting my quality of life. I like the HMO, but I don't do stupid shit, so I rarely see a doctor. Regular check-ups are about $60, and I don't see why my insurance company should pay that. I also find the union's contract "banker's hours" much too restrictive to get any real work done, so I ignore them. I doubt my opinions would be popular with my co-workers, or my union reps.
Anyway, I used to think I had such a clever idea with "flat corporations" (my term). I figured that if a new type of corporation came about, with reasonable salary caps, limited management, tax bonuses, and emphasis on the highest quality employee workmanship in exchange for better pay, that the market would wipe out the Big Men (Pig Men) through ultra-competitive pricing. Then I realized that the Fat Cats can just pay some guy in China to do it even cheaper at the same level of quality (attracting consumers based on price) and still collect his 7-digit salary for keeping his company profitable. Oh well, that is the way of capitalism I guess.
DISCLAIMER: This post may contain the discussion of things not necessarily in the article, but perhaps somewhat related. I reserve the right to wonder off-topic, go out of context and generally ramble on like a drunk. If your reply includes "RTFA", I invite you to RMFD (Read My Fscking Disclaimer).
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Esp. any CEO that has ever downsized a company to improve the bottom line.
Sure you'd probably not get the greatest formal poses ever, but I'd bet that the pictures taken would give a much better rememberance of the event. Like "Oh, here's Aunt Tilly pouring the punch onto Uncle Walter", and "Yah, remember that awful tie George wore." Much more fun.
And those formal poses. Just photoshop faces into one and it will look fine. Just like every other formal wedding picture ever taken and thereafter ignored by everyone.
Negotiate to get the negatives and contact sheets at the end of the gig, and go make your own prints.
We ended up with a wedding album that's the envy of every couple that sees it, and we spent around $500 total. Oh, and having the negs makes it easier to archive the negs and slides on a CD-ROM.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
You've never bought any real estate, have you? I agree that realtors should be compensated, but on the other hand I'd much rather have not paid a large portion the commission fee, thank you very much. I don't know about you, but I'm quite capable of evaluating a potential propery as to its suitability. It's really easy to open your eyes and look at the neighborhood and look up demographics, median income, crime statistics, etc online - so easy in fact that as a buyer you'd be negligent if you didn't double check what your realtor is telling you.
Don't think a high-priced realtor won't take you for a ride or push whatever property will get them the most benefit. Money does not buy character.
Anyway, about wedding photographers. Most wedding photographers I know of are not just wedding photographers, they they do weddings just to put bread on the table. Most certinaly aren't rolling around in the cash. And if that guy thinks that the photos are just mediocre, then perhaps he should give his camera to an amature, and see what kind of photos they manage to produce.
It has nothing to do with productivity. Maybe you don't enjoy watching sports, but it's quite obvious that a lot of people do. The market has spoken.
Oh wait, this nitwit throws the ball into the stands. Right, now we know why successful quarterbacks are white. Doug Flutie notwithstanding.
A good player can bring in the noodnick fans, who will forgive their favorite sports star any crime under the sun. I remember when Tyson was convicted of rape, most of the sports nuts I knew were more concerned about not being able to see him fight again than anything else.
The sports star will bring in the fanatical, sycophantic fans, so they do deserve a cut, even thought it's the sheeplike fans that are really at the root of the extra income.
Same goes for film stars. There's a lot of really talentless millionaires wandering around Hollywood, but these vapid, empty vessels bring people to movies.
Get three feet outside of geekdom, and you're in a strange world of typical moviegoers who only care if a movie has some hunky star or busty starlette. They don't care about plot, or story, or theme, or writing, or even basic coherency.
It's sad, but I have to be honest, and say that the folks who are directly the reason for filling seats do deserve a piece of the action.
Hey, I don't work all that hard on the average, but I make $130K a year because my hardware designs (helped by an annual flash of invention) bring in business.
In the end it doesn't matter. Someone else getting rich does not preclude you or me from getting rich. The amount of money in the world is not finite, despite the claims to the contrary of the ideological set. As long as the "overpaid" spend their money and invest it, it goes back into circulation. People need to stop fretting over the salaries of other people, and concentrate on their own.
--- Ban humanity.
Is someone being overpaid? If you're the one paying them (customer, client), then stop. It just makes you look like a hypocrite when you whine. And if you're not the one paying them (directly, indirectly, through taxes), it's none of your business.
Wages are prices, and despite the pseudo-economics the media dumps at you on a continual basis, prices are based solely on what the buyer and seller can agree on. While the prices for wedding photographers may seem rather steep to you (and me), the fact that they're charging so much means that the average couple is willing to pay those prices. Supply and demand doesn't determine prices. Labor doesn't determine prices. The only things that sets prices are what the seller is willing to take and what the buyer is willing to give.
Let's take a look at professional athletes. They charge a lot for their "services" because the teams are willing to pay for them. If the teams weren't willing to pay, the stars would either have to lower their prices, or not get signed on. If the prices were too high, they would stop signing on stars. Second, advertisers and fans are willing to help pick up the tab by advertising the games or attending the events.
The "justice" of the pricing has nothing to do with it. Is it fair that quarterbacks get paid more than teachers? Apparently, the population in aggregate seems to think so, because it's the population in aggregate that's paying those skewed wages. And you're part of that aggregate. When's the last time you sent your kids off to school with tip money for the teacher?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
..I'd say that product suckage is a very pertinant issue.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I am not speaking from the sidelines, I am speaking as the owner of a $1 million+ home and I have dealt with these people. Homes in that range sell themselves or never get sold at all. You do not convince someone to spend seven figures unless they have already decided to on their own. What the agent does is place the home in MLS, put up a sign, hold a few open houses, and order an inspection. For a smaller home this is decent work for decent pay, but on seven figure homes they end up doing an incredibly small amount of work for what they take down, particularly if they represent buyer and seller, which is quite often the case.
If you really think they screen clients, think again. They will tell you to your face that word of mouth is very important, and they want almost anyone passable seeing the house. So yes they will let the guy who lives in a van see your house, because they are convinced he has a rich cousin.
Real estate agents really only bring one thing to the table - access to MLS. Thats it. Its an incredible monopoly that is now being broken. ANYONE can order an inspection and do the closing. You do not have to be an agent to sell a house.
There is no simple reason for why this recession started, but yours is incorrect. Perhaps the most significant reason was what Alan Greenspan called the "irrational exuberance" of investors in horrendously overvalued stocks and of the hordes of investors who chased businesses with pointless plans that just didn't stand a chance of success. The collapse of the "dot com bubble" was one domino of many that led to the last recession. Companies that appeared to be successful, but really weren't caused investors to lose faith in the market...suddenly many people didn't know whom to trust. I suppose the WTC attack also played a role as well. Those are a few.
Consumer spending, which is what you're talking about, is only one part of what drives the economy. In fact, it's what's brought the economy out of the recession. Another part is corporate spending. And that's where the bulk of the nation's gazillionaire's money goes. You're right, it's pretty damn hard to run through a few hundred million dollars quickly, but that's not how things work. Michael Eisner doesn't have hundreds of millions sitting in a room in his house. His money is in the bank, in stocks, in bonds...in investments. It's kind of like the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". The money isn't sitting in a pile somewhere...it's part of the loan that built some houses, part of the bonds that built the school down the road, part of the venture capital that created jobs in a startup, part of the stock issue that enabled a company to expand into a new market.
The money doesn't get spent on consumer goods, but it certainly gets spent...several times over. Because part of the money that Eisner put in the bank went into that home loan that employed a contractor who bought a pickup from a car dealer that bought new computers from the local computer store that paid its utility bill to the electric company that paid a lineman to install a new transformer... If that's not trickle down, then what is? Economics is a system with a ton of parts. It ain't simple. Shucks, it isn't so hard to figure this out...just note that the amount of money in circulation is a small fraction of the total US GDP.
-h-
You guys had me rolling in stitches. :-)
:-)
It's good to find something worthwhile here occasionally, even if it's no longer tech talk. I'll remember elk speed for a long time.
First, a case in point. I'm a Sr. Staff Engineer. According to my boss, I'm the highest paid SW engineer in my division. In terms of gross compensation the CEO of my company makes about 150 times more than I do. The work he does in a little over 3 days should therefore benefit the company as much as does the work I do in an entire year. He has to outperform me by 15,000%. All modesty aside, I just don't think he's up to it. I honestly think he would have a very difficult time outperforming me by a factor of ten. One of the CEO's responsibilities is to make sure that the company is well managed. Based on the number of chronically mismanaged projects here, I would have to say that he is doing a really poor job.
On the issue of executives earning their pay based on "hard work, risk, and education", I would say that only education seems to be a true factor, education and political connections. Hard work and risk? That makes me laugh. Here's a little story about a VP who took a profitable product, turned it into a money losing business in less than 3 years and then was sidelined and shuffled off into a cushy position, while the project that he oversaw went down in flames. About a hundred people on that project lost their jobs through no fault of their own, while the executives in charge of the business decisions all retained their employment and were moved aside onto other projects. Where, I ask you, is the risk? There is no risk in the Good Ole Boys club, once you're in, you're in and you can do no wrong. Golden parachutes are the most visible examples, but the problem goes much, much deeper.
The wealth imbalance in corporate America is out of hand. The system is corrupt, compensation is no longer based on performance and merit. The system must be corrected or it will fail. The US will eventually not be able to compete with overseas competitors. This is already the case in several key markets. A correction will come one way or another.
...of course, brand name is not nothing. But it doesn't have to mean anything at all. Your noname eating place might be cheaper and just as good as Hard Rock Cafe or some other brand name place.
It doesn't matter, as long as they got something "good enough" to keep the brand. Same with your top photographer. He knows people want his "brand" photos. And he gets away with sending an assistant that'll do it "good enough".
Not to mention the usual issue with consumers not knowing what's good or bad, or when they're being overcharged. Happens quite often for those things you buy rarely, like a car, a house, or wedding photographies.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I am going to become a baggage handler... $100,000 a year (most of it in cash). Just for tossing a bag on a conveyor belt.
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
I want to know why the estate taxes weren't modified years ago to peg them to inflation or some other non-legislatively updatable financial model. I could easily live with $10 or even $20M as the point where estate taxes kick in, and leave amounts lower untaxed.
These days, $10M is enough to ensure one or two generations of family "has it made" in terms of education, housing and medical care, but it hardly guarantees even a life of leisure for those that direcly inherit it.
It seems to me the estate tax got a bad rap because it was wasn't properly indexed, and a few people who were clearly not members of the privileged class got nailed pretty hard. I know someone who fits this description, although even though she had to sell the family owned bank (in a small town), she and her two brothers still have several million each after taxes.
Had the estate tax been indexed to include only egregious wealth and not incidental wealth, it might still be around.
Instead we've decided to become Brazil.
My pro wedding photos weren't any better than the ones my mom took. Yeah, he did the legwork of setting everyone and knowing how to get us organized.
Which I'd gladly pay for.
Then why the heck does the photographer get the copyright? Either I should be paying someone to do a job (like paying a graphic artist to make me a graph) with a product that I keep, or the photographers should do the whole thing for free and only make money off the copyrights. To get both is just plain stupid.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
A fine ripost but please define "light"...
- X-ray Ted
P.S. IIRC, the plural of Elk is Elk
Yeah, they are overpaid and typically do a poor job. And to add insult to injury they usually don't give you the negatives. (Bastards!). My wife and I, however, were lucky to find a fantastic photographer who happened to also do weddings. He blended in with our guests and you hardly knew he was there. He has an amazing eye was able to catch a lot of great candids. And on top of that, he gives you the negatives to do whatever you want with them. Check out Gary Irving's Website if you want to see some examples.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Front office mismanagement indeed. The problem is Donald Sterling and his commitment to making the most amount of money while paying his players the least amount of money. This bum has made so much money by constistently having some of the best rookie players then dumping them when their initial contracts expire. He gets the fans' hopes up by touting these phenoms to sell tickets, and even when the fans have wised up and stopped going to see the constant failure that is the Clippers, he make a killing off of the NBA profit sharing. It's a cycle that continues endlessly. He is absolute scum. Stop having hope because it's useless in this situation,a nd stop supporting this ultra-bum of a team owner. My advice is just be a Laker fan.
I am not a wedding photographer, but I work in the photo industry and make a product that wedding photographers use.
They are NOT, as a general measure, in the $40-60K per event range. They CAN'T be. Do the math. How many average wedding couples can hire that single aspect of their wedding at that price? As you said, only the TOP photographers. As the article says, the ABOVE AVERAGE photographer would have to do 20 double wedding weekends in the $5000 range per to pull down $100K. I don't know any that actually do that.
Most of the ones I know personally make anywhere from $10k A YEAR (they sideline with photo store or other jobs) up to maybe $40-$60k A YEAR.
I hired someone for my wedding last year. I'm lower middle-class and we felt supremely pinched to consider the $2500 we paid and we got to keep all the files (totally digital) to print as we wanted. He was the most expensive of the several we looked at, but he was considered the best by many. The photographer did 2 weddings that weekend -- and nothing else all week, but that was a PRIME weekend. Assuming he got another 12 PRIME weekends a year (and I think that would be stretching it) he'd be pulling down $60k. Then he'd have to pay assistants so just whack a nice percentage out for that.
And he'd have to deal with:
* Mother of the bride
* Cheap brides who won't pay for prints because they read "how to scan" in Wedding Dress magazine
* Rude wedding guests trying to steal her shots or triggering her flashes
* Missing ANY shot that that anyone thought he should have gotten
* Disposable cameras on the table
* A VERY FULL WEEK editing
* Employing assitants
* Moving 10's of thousands of dollars of heavy photo equipment around in ANY weather, usually in a tuxedo
* And much much more
For most of these guys, this is their whole business. They have to pay rent, taxes, utilities and all of that for their studio OUT OF their service price in addition to their normal salary for keeping the lights on at home. Most of the other jobs listed had no such restrictions.
The product I make comes in two flavors. The cheap one and the expensive one ($350 and $600). The cheap one is extremely popular in the wedding industry. The expensive one is not a great seller in that market. Why? Research shows that it is too rich for the average wedding photographer's blood, even though it is a god send for him as far as function. The guy I hired had the cheap one.
My practical day to day dealings with this industry do not back up the conclusions reached in that article. Sure, some make the big bucks, but EVERY WEEKEND? All the time? ALL OF THEM?!? I'd be curious what the average PER YEAR PER PHOTOG was for the wedding service you worked for, not just the cream of the crop.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Professional athletes aren't government employees, so the government doesn't have any say in how much we the people are willing to pay them. If we follow your logic, why don't we take some of the cash from the bonehead CEO's who don't deserve what they get, or rich kids who don't ever work a day in their life. They obviously don't deserve the money they have.
Just because you don't see the value of entertainment sports provide doesn't mean the rest of us should be punished by having less motivated less qualified athletes.
So now we have two (at least three actually) new units of measurement...
Elkpower and Elk velocity, and Illegitimate Kids Per Player (or is it Playa) units...MWAHAHAHAHAHA
I know people (especially slashdot nerds) love to trash on anything related to professional sports, but let's actually think about this for a second. Becoming a professional athlete is not an easy thing to do. It's not just "throwing a ball," it's hours of training every day. And even with all the training in the world, there's still no guaruntee that you'll even get in the gate, even less that you'll become a highly paid star. Injuries come pretty often as well, which will put a stop to any career you had going.
They're taking a bigger risk than most people ever take by deciding to devote their life to something that can so easily go wrong. In my opinion they do deserve to be rewarded for taking that risk. I don't enjoy sports, I don't watch them, but logically it makes sense to me for professional athletes to get paid a lot. Same with movie stars. The reward is proportional to the risk.
think ours are bad, check out the dock gangs in japan. they are the protectionism of japan!
This is my sig.
Who do I pay ta join dah onion.
I gotta get me one a dem jobs at dah wharf.
Stelllaaaaaaa !!!!!!
Talk about overpaid... The "expert" ought to list his own salary. Everyone is so willing to point at the other guy and cry foul, and of course someone gets paid to do that? Who here couldn't write that article, picking your 10 pet peeves, and claim that "expert's" salary?
He begins by shouting that supply/demand statistics don't justify those salaries, but nowhere does he list a single number supporting his personal choices. And in the end, that's all his article is, a list of the jobs he personally thinks are overpaid, because he lists no supporting evidence. When he's done with the training required to be an orthodontist, or has compiled 20 years of mishap-free commercial flying as a senior pilot, then maybe he can claim how trivially easy it is to get those qualifications. And he can STFU until he backs his grandiose claims about the supply/demand balance with a few numbers rather than his personal (worthless) opinion.
No proof, not insightful, but way to rage against the machine, d00d.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Plus, for the unenlightened (including the original article's author) think about what a photographer actually does.
In addition to the highly skilled work in developing the pictures, there's the hard manual labor of 6-8 hours on his feet, lugging around many pounds of eq. (Not to mention the thousands of dollars that eq cost.)
Oh, and btw, after the developing and printing is done, something has to be done with all those chemicals. You can't just pour that stuff down the drain.
I paid $3k for a wedding photographer in New England, and I feel like I ripped him off! (He did raise prices after I signed my contract.)
RPI's president is the highest paid university president while all us students and a LOT of the faculty is miserable with the way the school is run...
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Don't these idiots know anything about where the salaries come from?
Wedding photographers make big bucks because people want to make sure they don't get awful, amateur pictures. Everything associated with a wedding is expensive because (at least in theory) it's a one-time event that means a lot to a lot of people, so they don't want to risk being disappointed. Being a wedding photographer requires not only photography skills, but also the ability to deal with angry people (if your pictures don't turn out) and stressed out people (even if they do), as well as taking the same picture over and over again. Because of that, there are few people who want the job and can do it, so the pay is high. Duh!
Luxury home real estate agents act snobbish towards people who visit luxury open houses because *that's their job*. They want to drive up the price of the home, and make it seem exclusive, and part of that is making sure that if you're allowed to look at a luxury home, you feel privileged! Sure, they make high commissions, but dealing with the type of people who could buy or sell a home like that takes more skills than just the ability to pass a real-estate test.
Motivational speakers make money because people want to hear what they want to say. Pro athletes make money because people want to watch them play, or buy things they endorse, etc. Often the incremental cost for each of these things isn't huge. Say on average everybody who watched Micheal Jordan play baskeball over his career bought three pairs of "Air Jordan" sneakers and 100 happy meals. That's relatively cheap for them, but since he gets a cut of millions of people doing that, he gets money. Now sure, you can argue with whether people should be buying things an athlete endorses, but that's their value system. Sure, a pair of "Air Jordan" shoes is expensive, but it's a status symbol, and maybe it helps in their social circle. Paying a thousand dollars to listen to a former president speak is similar. I'm sure nobody thinks they're honestly learning amazing new things they could never learn otherwise, however they get to rub elbows with other people. It's networking, it's status, so hwo do you put a price on it?
Most of the other jobs are either about unions and the undue power they have, or about jobs that take a lot of time and effort to get. (Orthodontist takes years of schooling, mutual fund manager takes years of getting certified as a financial analyst, etc). As for the unions, I think it's accepted that they're pretty corrupt and wield undue power, but eventually that power will fail. As for the jobs that take years to get, most people aren't willing or able to spend almost 10 years after high school to get a very boring, but very high paying job. Those that do can command high salaries.
It's all about supply and demand. I hope this was meant as a fluff piece, because if this is the kind of serious market analysis these people do, I'm not impressed.
"I would find it extremely doubtful...", but have you really checked?
There are hundreds of thousands of male students who play football in high school each year. Only a select few are chosen to play at major college schools [less than 1%, IIRC], and some others decide to play at smaller schools [say tens of thousands]. Pro scouts look high and low for potential athletes to join their ranks. Many are invited to summer tryouts. With few exceptions, there are no people who are big, strong, fast, agile and smart enough to play a position in the majors who haven't been found. Read up on what it takes - physical capability-wise - to even make it into the tryouts. Not something that just anyone can do.
"Clearly the pay is help create a mystic about the person..."
Umm, yeah...there are lots of industries who pay employees big wages in order to create a mystic about them. No, actually, it's probably because the 'mystic', as you put it, is that this league has the highest level of skilled performers in that particular profession - bigger, stronger, faster, etc. than the 'average' person [in this realm, physical excellence is more treasured than mental].
I don't doubt that there are some who could play in the NFL [or one of the feeder leagues like NFL Europe or arena football] who aren't, but just because you have a large pool of people, that doesn't mean you should be able to assume a large subset who can perform a specific task.
Don't forget - capability doesn't equal ability. Just because someone is intelligent, has a strong sense of logic, and good typing skills, won't necessarily make them good at programming, will it? Or are you saying that any of 40 million 20-somethings could be one of the few top programmers?
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Can any of those other people get 60,000 people to pay $50 each to watch them work for 3 hours? No?
Does that explain part of the differece in pay?
You don't get paid what you "deserve". You get paid what you're worth to other people who can (and want to) pay you.
just shy of 100K then retire after 20 Years with 50K. Law AND Order
Typical ... no respect for the opinions or positions of others.
...
The same rules your parent's were supposed to teach you. Treat others fairly and honestly. I guess you missed that day
Oh, as for the past, there was less of a wage disparity thirty years ago then there is today. Go ahead, ignore the evidence and hope that you remain among the overpaid.
Yes, it's crippled. If you compare where we are to where we could or should be, you'd realize how much we've all lost.
Go ahead, glorify greed and self service. Anything that makes you feel better must be good eh.
Words to men, as air to birds.
period
It is a blatant bitch session with NO attempt to provide a balanced look at anything. There is absolutely no way I am willing to say that I think that these are anywhere close to the most overpaid jobs in the US.
hmmmm?
Steve Jobs?
Ceci n'est pas une sig
Is that player salary has a direct impact on ticket prices, concessions, parking, or merchandise.
Prices for those things are driven my supply and demand. The reason a Coke costs $5 at a ball game is because people will pay that price. Tickets likewise are driven by what people are willing to pay.
Teams may justify raising ticket prices because of player salaries, but if it became unprofitable the pricing model would change.
I'm sick of hearing about greedy pro sports players, they, with very rare exceptions, get paid what the market will bear for their skills. Owners know this, players know this, arbitrators know this, GMs too. Fans don't, they're blinded by the size of the contracts floating between the teams and the players, and instinctively react as 0x20 did, that greedy players are driving up the cost of the game.
If you want to blame anyone for the high price of concessions and tickets to pro sports events, blame the owners for taking their product and marketing it to a much more affluent audience, and blame the bastard who can't be bothered to tailgate or bring his own food to the game, but instead drops the cash on the most expensive seats, the season tickets, or the overpriced ($7 12 oz. cups of Bud at Dodger games this year) concessions.
-dameron
I had the oppurtunity to land a gig as a wedding photographer while a student. So I asked my photography instructors for tips. All of them had done A wedding, only one had done more then one.
His list of horror stories made me reject the job.
Basically the impression I got, is there is NO more high stress photo assignment then weddings. Not only does everyone think they know the best angle, but they all want their own poses. This isn't just the party that paid for the photographer, EVERYONE thinks the photographer is their personal slave.
PLUS, the criteria for a good job may just lie on whether the mother of the groom had a good shot, was/wasn't included in the photo or whether they got the special flower arangement put on the table. In fact, people have tried suing over the fact that out of 20 photos, the stupid bride blinked in every fricken one. Or the one where the groom actually tried to smile was the one when the brides head was turned, and even though the photographer took 40 photos of the pair, Unlce Merv got the picture and THEY didn't pay him squat!
As well, the article makes it seem as if it is a one-day job. PUHleaze, how bout fighting with the lab over whether the prints look good. How bout reviewing 20-40 contact sheets looking for the good pictures.
UGH... $1200 per day? Damn, that's too little.
No proof that that there's a growing wage disparity? How comfortable it must be to live in denial. Go ahead, enjoy your priviliged position ... while it lasts.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Sorry.
The government unions aren't a free market.
They take my money, or I go to jail.
I have no control.
Dead celebrities whose estates get paid for them being in new commercials and other uses of their image.
Nobody who works damn hard for a living (like Pilots, wedding photographers, etc.) is overpaid like these people. I mean, they just lay there rotting and get major bank.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
1)Typical vig on a residential sale is 5-6%. So a good agent is looking at 2.5%, maybe 3, but most likely 2.5 or less because of competition from real estate web sites. So the agent may get 5% for covering both the selling and buying sides. Which isn't that hard to pull off--most folks don't know about buyer-agents, and most agents will 'discount' the commission (only take 2.5% rather than the full 5%) if the work both ends to help the sale go through. (When you're working 100% commission, just because each sale is big doesn't mean you don't worry about that next sale. Especially in a biz as seasonal as residential real eastate.)
He forgot to add personal finance editor's for CBS.MarketWatch.com
Yes, it looks like a lot of money, but not really...people say that about all low wage workers that rake it in! You figure that a SkyCap [used to] take your bags from the curb to the check-in desk, usually get you a good spot in line, and do it quickly and efficently. If it took 10 minutes of his time, but saved 30 minutes of yours [+ fustration of forgeting something] Then he made YOU 3x as efficent in your travels! Now if you make even $15/hour and tip 7.50 then you are breaking even for your time, but he's getting $7.50+ by 6 visits per hour which is $45/hour just for lending a hand...but it's definately not "overpaid" it is in fact an economic gain for both parties...now imagine a $500/hour CEO and you can see why they get big tips for "menial" work.
Now, he argues that it is important to have the rich because without the rich, there would be no Maecenas, alluding to the famous Greek patron of the arts. If we reduce people to equality, society as a whole suffers and flounders -- sure, there are people who are rich, but they aren't the people next door anymore.
On the other hand, he argues, the rich should give back to those who helped him or her get there. If he or she does not contribute to charity, he or she must be forced to return the majority of the money back into society at death.
The estate tax in America comes into effect with an estate valued at $1M+. Owning a home and some retirement, it's relatively easy (assuming you're 40+ and have been saving) to have an estate worth more than that.
By the way, every time a politician talks about taxing "rich" people, realize that "rich" under the IRS definition is making about $50K jointly or around $25K as a single. Everyone reading this has the opportunity to become affluent if he or she simply saves their money and waits 15 - 20 years... doesn't matter which mutual fund, take any large cap mutual fund. See how you feel about politicians beating down on the "rich".
The very rich are able to get around the estate taxes, but they give up absolute control of their estate to a large extent through either an irrevocable trust or a charitable foundation.
That's why there are organizations like the Carnegie Foundation still around today. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be around long after Bill & Melinda (and their wealth) are footnotes in history. If Gates can't take his money with him, he has to do something with it.
Appreciate the Aqua Teen Hunger Force sig. Hysterical.
Umm, 14-8 with a 3.84 ERA, the ace of the Braves rotation and a gold glove winner? Apparently MLB owners and managers know more about the worth of players than the writer of this article.
Blame the working man.
how about the most underpaid?
teachers obviously is one of them,
but how about PhD researchers and professors? talk about the most imbalance in intelligence vs income. very unfortunate.
my blog
You gotta wonder where these people are, considering the prices that they charge.
I am a professional artists, and I appreciate that you pay for quality. I do not think $2k per event is unreasonable for a good photographers. Now the guys that are makin upwards of $10k...they are really no better than the average, and I personally scanned around 50,000 wedding photos at my old job. The guy that sent his assistant's stuff was really just mediocre.
Event photographers VERY RARELY develop their own photos. Most these days shoot either digitally or just send their negatives in to a web service, which scans them and makes digital prints. Even if they do traditional prints they get them done at a professional lab. moonlight is the most popular in Southern california. They have their prices for processing and prints so you can get an idea of the photographer's mark up. They do all the darkroom work as well, to the photographer's specs, but all the burning and dodging is up to the lab. And if your photographer is working digitally (like the guy that charges $60k) his cost per print is $0, the web service company eats that cost and makes up for it on a sales commision. It works out to around 25 cents per 8x10.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
You've never been to Las Vegas have you? Well you can FORGET EVER getting a job as a skycap. That's THE most coveted job in the city. In fact, the only way your going to land that phat and cherry job is through political ties to the owner of the hotel or resort.
Life is not for the lazy.
Reduce every problem to class warfare by oversimplifying and ignoring inconvenient facts.
> Overpaid? The HR people I met that are "fun fun" for employees, organize paintball events, X-mas parties and receives resume they forward to the boss makes 30-55K.
Too bad all this useful activity distracts them from promptly sending out rejection letters (instead of just blowing the candidate off) or delegating the interview to someone who actually know what the hell they are talking about in the field.
Time to go brush up on my "people" skills. Java can wait...
We paid our wedding photographer to take pictures, and make a single 3x5 print of each one. We got the negatives. I think it cost ~$300 (mabye ~500) about two years ago. It was a small, informal wedding, only a few posed pictures, so his time investment was relatively small, and it was 4 or 5 36 shot rolls. The posed pictures were no worse than any other posed pictures of us (my wife and I both have a extremely difficult time looking "normal" when we know a camera is pointed at us), and some of the candid/casual/whatever shots are pretty good.
I know others who have made similar arrangements with their wedding photographer. Decide what you want, and find someone to do it.
Mr Plummer turns the truth on its head when he fails to note that the Longshoremen didn't strike but were locked out by the shipping companies who run the ports. His disingenuousness over this issue undercuts his points. But ideologues aren't interested in truth but in making their ideas seem reasonable even when they aren't. It is clear that Mr Plummer is one of the overpaid.
You're wasting your time. The other poster is just trolling, or else he's a moron who thinks pyramid schemes work.
no text
The Sioux city was one of the most amazing feats of airmanship. That and the landing of KAL 902 on the frozen lake after it was shot up by a Su rank very high on my list of people who've done amazing things.
Jobs, that is.
Just out of curiosity, how is (was) the money spent in Finland, France, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, or Switzerland, which had a wealth tax as of 1999? (See The Wealth Tax and Economic Growth, by Asa Hansson of the Lund University Department of Economics.)
To me, anyone who takes home a bloated paycheck belongs to the category of them not us. :-)
Pharmacists are extremely over paid. They start at around 75K and go well past 100K. They are one reason drugs cost so much. Granted, they have "tough" school, but their job consists of being able to count to 30 and read. And they have their assistants (just some bloke) do most of this. I could argue many doctors are over paid as well as most of the medical industry, but I'l focus on pharmacists.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
10) WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS
/., maybe he could adjust his salary to the same level of compensation.
WTF? Using the writer's own figures, 2 weddings *4.33 weeks*6months=52 weddings, each requiring at least five hours of on-site work and an equal or greater amount off-site. That comes to a very normal professional service rate of about $115/hour INCLUDING all the expendables. Piss off, buddy, that's par for the course.
I wonder what someone with the following pedigree pulls in, since he failed to print his own salary. Last I worked in news (as an unpaid peon intern, they LOVE that in broadcast media) damn near everyone in the newsroom broke $100k and the big guns made millions:
"CBS Assistant Managing Editor, was a news editor for Bloomberg News, Executive Editor for the Daily Record in Baltimore and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times."
Now, I know he paid his dues at the LA Times, but I'm going to bet he now easily breaks $100k, putting him right smack in the top 7% of earners nationwide. For writing bullshit fluff like this, I think that's pretty damned over-paid. Hell, I've seen better writing on
I think I'll ask him. Why don't you?
Really, Ask Him
Goodness, I don't even know where to start responding to this.
I guess I'll try to take things in order.
1. The idea that CEO's of well-performing companies are overpaid, specifically, Michael Eisner.
Disney's value is about $60 billion according to Yahoo finance, and they reported $1.3 billion in profit last year. So Eisner's in charge, he makes all the big decisions or decides who does, he guides the ship, and he gets about 50% of profits, at least for one year. A lot of companies pay a lot more than that to whoever's in charge, for example, a lot of small companies that pay 100% of profits to the owner. So they scale it down a lot for a big company. Still, Eisner's making a lot more and a much larger percent of profits than most comparable big-wigs, so maybe he is overpaid. But how can we tell?
Is he worth 50%? Well, look at all the huge companies that don't do so well. I mean, Disney's making a lot of money. But Time Warner, which made 1.8 billion dollars profit in 2000, lost $54 billion last year. So that's what can happen with the wrong management. Disney's board of directors probably took into account the possibility of Eisner leaving Disney, what some other companies might offer him in compensation, and how they thought it would impact the company to hire their next best choice for CEO, as compared to retaining Eisner. If they thought it was reasonably likely that maintaining Eisner would bring in at least $700 million more than their next best option, and reasonably likely Eisner might leave if they didn't pay him that, then the number looks like a reasonable choice.
Now, I would tend to agree with you, not being privileged to all the information the Board of Directors of Disney have access to, that this still seems like a big number. But then, we're looking at the worst case: the most highly paid CEO in the world. And we're looking at an anomalous year. Many CEO's don't have very stable income (not that they're going to run out of money or anything, it just has a high variance), and I'm sure Eisner's average compensation over his tenure as CEO is really way below $700 million/year. But I think it's conceivable that this isn't over compensation, and that a lot of CEO's with incomes that may sound awfully big aren't being paid out of line with what they're worth to the best of the board's ability to judge.
That's all about whether it's worth it or not to Disney. There's also another issue, which I think is really none-of-our business because it's their company, but is an interesting thing to speculate on: is it good for society?
I'm not going to take this on for the Disney case, because it's too hard to argue about what the value to society is of producing a good movie. But take someone like Rockefeller. When he entered the oil industry in the early 1860's, when oil was still primarily used to make kerosene for heating and illumination, the availability and quality of kerosene were terrible, the prices were high, and many people couldn't afford the product at all due to it's high cost or low quality. The same went later for gas for cars. But when Rockefeller entered these markets, he quickly came to dominate through introducing dozens of innovations, and reliably providing a product of superior quality for lower prices. But soon the competition started to close in, and while availability and quality continued to rise, and prices continued to fall, new national corporations that primarily copied his innovative methods began to gobble national market share, so that from 1898 to 1906, Standard Oil's market share fell from 34% to 11%. It was even lower when the government first initiated anti-trust in 1908. So who won here? Rockefeller's innovations reformed an entire industry, and the benefits this created throughout society are immeasurable- better lighting, heating, and transportation. Better safety. Better availability of the product. And prices dropped steadily from his entry until anti-trust in 1908. He only gathered a tiny portion of the eco
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Of course the same is true for automboiles, yet no one is willing to give up control over driving... in a century of auto making we have made significant safety improvements to every part of the sytem -- except the driver...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
There are cons to digital, but more pros, I think. First, while it's true that the fees for reproductions for friends and family is reduced, this is offset by the sheer volume of shots you can get with digital. Also, being able to instantly review pictures helps with blown poses and bad exposures, while at the same time can be used to stimulate a boring client by showing previews of shots just taken.
And while there are now thousands of lackeys with digital cameras taking business away from seasoned professionals, I think you'll find the industry has long benefited from "word-of-mouth", and bad photographers will still remain bad photographers no matter if they shoot digital or film. With a good enough portfolio, you should be able to lure cheapskate couples from unwisely choosing inexperienced photographers just because their rates are lower.
(In response to the article): Wedding photographers get just one chance to capture the shot. If you miss it, you'd better be counting on a divorce if you ever want another shot at a client. With weddings being so emotionally important to people, there is an extreme amount of pressure to get it right, and not everyone can handle the stress while retaining their "composure for exposure". In regard to wedding pics, you usually get what you pay for.
how is this news for nerds? Sounds more like a ripped msn headline.
ôó
If any of you little dorks could drive a race car, quarterback, play golf, or shoot hoop at an elite level you'd do it. Sure as hell would beat wacking off to internet porn and writing code for free (open source suckers).
The fact is that you were weren't given those gifts and/or you don't have internal drive required to excel at those levels. So you have to lash out at those that are more talented.
It's very sad.
They must feel terribly guilty in being overpaid. I'd be more than happy to replace them at their currently salary. Once I feel guilty (in about 19-20 years), I'll gladly hand it over to someone else to take up the burden of being overpaid.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Thanks for saying this. I'm a wedding photographer and the notion that the majority of us are overpaid is ludicrous.
Someone mentioned 6-8 hour days. That's a small to medium booking. This year about a quarter of my weddings were 12+ hours. Think about that.
We're on our feet the whole time and we're lugging a ton of gear around all over the place. Prep is in one location, drive to the ceremony, drive to the portrait location and then get over to the reception. Aside from the logistics, the practice of photography (at least how I practice it) is one where the eyes, body and mind are constantly engaged looking for those great moments, the right light, making the best of bad conditions (think mixed lighting, irate guests, cramped venues, bad weather, etc).
It takes me a couple of days to recover from a wedding - if this still doesn't make sense, imagine holding over five pounds of metal, plastic and glass in front of your face all day *plus* secondary and tertiary camera bodies/lenses on either shoulder.
I could go on and on. So it's hard work, so what you say? Well, let's talk about what we're doing during the week: meeting potential clients, meeting existing clients, designing albums, handling print orders, editing the last wedding we shot, shooting engagement portraits, business administration, accounting, equipment maintenance, training associates, training ourselves, updating marketing materials (websites, proof sets, sample albums, tear sheets, collages, mini albums, etc), dealing with vendors who aren't delivering, and on and on.
Then there's costs associated with equipment. One thing that often gets overlooked is how much money is spent on gear. We're paid to take pictures and we spend the money to ensure we can do that. That means at *least* one backup for every piece of critical equipment. I take the job pretty seriously, so I've got backups for my backups. That's at least three complete systems for all the focal lengths I need. That's camera bodies, lenses, batteries, brackets, strobes, etc.
OK, so it's a real job, I get it - but it doesn't sound much harder than lugging your gear around, taking pictures, dealing with clients, investing in and maintaining equipment and handling the business side. Sounds like the stuff most businesses have to worry about. And that's the point, it's a business. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there that assume it's not. Instead, the common belief is that you show up with a camera, take pictures, head home and during the week you're spending all the money you made. Not so.
The starting salary for toll takers at the Golden Gate Bridge is 65 k a year. When anyone else can do the same job for half the pay, that's what I would call being overpaid.
When I first read the article I was kind of pissed off that these guys are making more money than I probably ever will. But then I thought, ok would I give up working in science/engineering for $300,000 to spend my life adjusting the braces of junior highschool kids. In effect, would I waste my life doing something I don't like for (admitedly) a lot of money when I can make a comfortable living doing what I like? Being a pilot or pro athlete would be cool for a while, but not nearly as cool as advancing science and technology. So if I wouldn't do most of those jobs -- even for a shitload of money -- I guess they're not really overpaid in my book.
Um, on second thought, mutual fund managers and CEOs are way overpaid. There's really no way to rationalize that.
A police officer holds my life in his hands as well, given the proper situation, just like a pilot. And yet we don't pay them anywhere near the same salaries. Don't get me wrong...my exgf's father is a pilot for Air Canada, and even he says their pay is more than what they should probably earn. Outside of a few errors with the computer during landings, he hasn't had to do much of anything during any of his flights. Basically, most of the flying and other tasks are done by computers these days.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Don't forget to add CEO to the list!
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
compensation expert!
From the article:
Captains with 12 years of experience earn up to $265 an hour at Delta, United, American and Northwest, which translates to $250,000 a year and more for a job that technology is making almost fully automated.
By comparison, senior pilots at low-fare carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue make about 40 percent less.
A pilot's pay is directly related to the size of the aircraft he/she flies. Southwest operates only the 737 type, which is considerably smaller than the 747/777/a4xx that the other carriers use. Therefore, the salary comparison is somewhat misleading.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
There you have it, garbage in garbage out. In the labour market, supply-and-demand far from being a valid meassure of whether or not someone is under or over paid, is actually nothing but a distorting force, hence labourers despite working their guts out, at back breaking often health damaging work, are almost always underpaid, teachers again (in Australia at least) are under paid.
The correct meassure of this is:
supply-and-demand is valid only after all that, really supply-and-demand are only valid in any market after questions of quality, suitability etc are answered, a product/service/whatnot is worthless if it's badly done/made or usless.
If you doubt me then "can I interest you in some rare trash?? or how about some Art work you hate (and thats also a bad investment)??. a bridge I don't own??"
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Athletes is about supply and demand.
The real money isnt in prowess in entertainment, it's in branding. There are lots of good players who are worth more because of name recognition. Name recognition brings attention from the semi-fans, and brings in lots of money. In that situation, its not the supply of good players, but rather the supply of 'name brand' players, which is vastly more limited. In this case, its more of an economic rent that causes the overpaid status.
Hey, nice work there. I love this photo. Ha!
I don't mind paying good money for good results, and it looks like you guys do nice work. But I have one question. Do you give your customers the negatives? I know that technically the person who took the picture owns the copyright, but I think it is really crappy when photographers keep the negatives. It's nothing more than a way to squeeze even more money out of the customer, and in many cases it just means the couple won't get all of the photos they wanted -- even though they exist and could be easily reproduced!
That was my main objective when looking for our wedding photographer. We had to get the negatives, no strings attached. It just happened that we found someone who did a great job at a lower price AND gave us the negatives. She didn't do all the extra stuff that it looks like you do with artistic color, etc, but that was fine because I got the negatives scanned and played to my heart's content with Photoshop. I actually ended up preferring it that way.
1. Investors will often shy away from a company with fair profitability if the employee payroll ecxeeds about 8%. For some industries, that's closer to 5%. 2. Legal hired guns often get 20% or better for their results (for example SCO, currently, is in a 20% deal). Lawyers get a one shot profit for the company, not a continueous one, and in some cases there's a real risk it is a paper profit only, where the losing company lacks the assets to pay. Why don't investors shy away from such companies? Why doesn't a labor cost 2 1/2 to 4 times what makes them nervous look positively insanely risky as a profit model?
Who is John Cabal?
Firstly, investments of all sorts are generally considered to be assets, not just cash and gold.
Secondly, do you really honestly believe that the "rich" get richer by squirelling it all away under their beds or something? No, you lose money that way every year with inflation. Gold is generally a pretty poor performer and it has no concrete value (e.g., it is subject to the same laws of supply and demand that your house is) Likewise, if you put it into a standard savings account, you might as well be standing still.
The rich get richer by buying into higher risk investments, e.g., privately-held companies, publically held stocks, and loans. As a general rule, the higher the return available, the higher the risk. If you look carefully at the numbers, you will see that, with the exception of certain institutional investors, it is the rich that comprise MOST equity in privately held companies. Now you might argue that the rich can do this because they can better afford to take risks or that they can aggregate their risks so as to diminish the overall risk, but the fact remains that they perform a very useful function in society.
Do you really believe that when a person buys art (a very small percentage of any wealthy individuals income anyways) that it just sits in some hole in the ground? No, it gets transfered to another wealthy person who WILL almost certainly eventually spend it or hopefully to an artist or some agent thereof that directly promotes the arts--in either event, the money keeps on moving. What do you care if it passes through an art house first?
The stock market on the aggregate over the past century or two has averaged better than 12 percent return per year. While that may not sound like much to you, when you compound the returns over a period of time, it quickly adds up to a lot of money. In other words, the wealthy already have significant encouragement to invest. Putting a gun to their heads and saying that they MUST invest constantly or face losing it all would be silly and counter-productive. Don't forget that the rich must get rich somehow first. If the government starts drastically dictating how the money is to be allocated that it just one more reason NOT to make the effort in the first place.
I also find it highly ironic that you're arguing for taxes so as to spur the rich to invest. Many of these taxes on dividends and capital gains are what dissuades the rich from investing in some of highest risk investments. [Put in the simplest of terms: If you have a 1 in 3 shot of winning a pool and a 2 and 3 shot of losing every dollar you invest, say, 1m dollars, then that pool must be at least 3M dollars before any rational individual would even THINK about investmenting, else it'd be a net average loss. Let's imagine for most people that that one in 3 shot must offer at least 4M dollars. Now what happens when the government decides to take 75% of that money from you in the event that you do win? Woops, game over. This point is this: If you tax windfalls heavily and don't reimburse losses at the other end, then your tax will have distortionary and undesirable effects on the markets]
Btw, the rich also lost disproportionately more money when the stock market fell over the past couple of years. It's no coincidence.
Now I can lose that gnawing, crippling, nay, debilitating feeling that, as a consultant, and wherupon forthwith and forsooth, a Guru, that I was overpaid.
I shall inquire immediately of my master regarding prospects for a raise in pay!
I can't find 'Programmer' on that list.
After a silly attempt to justify not including salaries of CEO's like Jack Welch, mega lawyers and other thieves, they go for worker bees and people with real and scare talent:
The only time someone is really overpaid is when they are in a position where competition is artificially restricted. One or two of the above fall into that catagory, but the people picked on are at the bottom of the food chain and have little responsibility for their position.
It's amazing to me that someone would publish such an article while we are flooded with corporate scandals like Enron or Tyson. The other day I was reading a story about how a former Tyson excutive directly stuck the company with more than a million dollars for his wife's wedding party and another million or so from his outrageous salary. His single birthday party is equivalent to eight to ten of the so called overpaid yearly salaries above.
I envy people who are actually making enough money to have a stay at home wife, educate their children and retire at a reasonable age. These things should not be confined to worthless upper management. Everyone who actually works for a living deserves as much. If there were more competition in the world, things would be better for everyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have to admit that I agree with this. The system is set so that it's only possible to make money when one already *has* money. And it's quite ridiculous that individuals can command hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. The only thing that this extra money serves is to be kept from those of lower class. People who barely get by will continually play sisyphus.
Further, this isn't even close to a complete list especially if you count politics and favors and corruption. How much of our taxes can we account for? Even if the US system may be more honest than other systems, the amount of corruption is still staggering.
Hey, thanks! We're proud of our work.
As for the negatives (actually, we're all digital, so it's the high-res files you're after)...it depends. See, here's the thing. We have to make a certain amount of money per wedding, or it's just not worth the hassle of all the work and the extra stress of running your own business. So, let's say we determine that in order to pay our fixed overhead (equipment insurance, internet, phone, etc etc) and have money enough left over to pay ourselves (food, housing, health insurance, retirement), we need to make $2,000 for that week's work. Our cost just for the wedding (prints, album, frames) is $500. Then, we need to gross $2,500.
We will gladly give somebody the high-res files if we get $2,500. Now, we know that if the guests and families buy prints from us, instead of just printing off the CD, we'll make an extra $500. So, we'll set up a package that's $2,000 without the CD, or $2,500 with the CD. Then, you choose whatever you want. Do you want to have the CD, and pay our entire gross yourself, or would you rather settle just for the prints, and let your friends and family cover the rest of the cost through reprints?
Also, after one year, our chance of getting any other sales is precisely zero, so we give the couple the entire set of images on CD or DVD for something like $50 on their first anniversary, if they want it. We get the money we need to cover the costs, and they get the photos for archival purposes...win-win.
So, you see, it's not a "we're evil and want to hoard somebody's wedding photos" thing, it's a "we need to make some money to cover the cost of all the work we're doing" thing. Nobody's ever complained. Now, I DO take issue with some of the other photographers I know who refuse to sell the negatives/high-res files under any circumstances. I think that is shitty, it makes no sense economically or customer relations wise, and it makes the rest of us look bad.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Comparing to most of people around the world, most of americans are overpaid. I hope that eventially the globalization will fix it. Americans do not deserve what they have.
Less is more !
LOL.. do you really think that if the top pro quarterbacks got $500,000/yr that they would all up and quit? Or are you trying to say that a young football player in high school would look at that and say, "Hell, I can't live on that! I should work at McDonalds since that's the only other thing I'm qualified to do!" Give me a break.
C*O
Corporate (Anything) Officer
Shadus
Where can I sign up to do one of those? To hell with Aerospace Engineering classes.... These pay more and have probably a more secure job market.
Hey, we all can't be winners. - a worldly truth from someone who knows best
Well, you completely miss the point. Goverment is not allowed to set limits on what private companies pay employees (the greedy athletes.) The free market determines the worth of their profession. The free market has determined that they are worth the money they get.
What you suggest is that people of a certain profession that you feel are overpaid should have a cap on how much money they make. How about capping techies at 50g's a year. Give the rest to the teachers, and policemen. The problem is, that's government interfering with free market. That's not the way we work. I realize you don't like it, but this is a fundamental aspect of our system.
Or don't, which is certainly easier.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Speaking of underperforming companies...
Not all jobs are literally brain surgery but the cost and problems associated with fucking it up are rather extreme. That is why they get paid that to some extent. It's called occupational insurance.
You know that when Bayer first sold aspirin in the US in 1900 the cost was like a a nickle for this big bottle. No one bought it until they jacked the price to a buck.
I don't know about you but I pester events photographers until they get it exactly fucking perfect.
I learned from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2003. While I've never flown for United, I bet any competent flight sim geek would be able to do it.
My proof? The Krypton Factor, a British game show that ran during the 90s (when I studied in London.) During the season, contestants would land a simulated 747. During the season finale, they landed the real thing.
Am I the only one who really doesn't care?
First of all, most of these jobs are fairly easy to get. Wedding photographer? Take a few classes at the local community college, buy some equipment, and put an ad in the paper. Yeah, it might take some skill and some work to make $100,000 in six months, but if you can do it, then good for you.
Longshoremen? Blue-collar shipping jobs don't rank very high as the toughest jobs to get. And many blue-collar jobs pay pretty high salaries. People don't do them because they don't like the job.
Airport skycap and real estate agent jobs also aren't hard to get. Like the article says, anyone can be a real estate agent.
If a company wants to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a public speaker, good for them. And people LOVE their sports teams and their movie stars, so they'll happily pay for tickets to games and movies and buy the latest box set DVD crap they can get their hands on.
In a free market, prices are usually set by demand and competition. So most prices are fair. If a baseball team is getting enough money to pay someone millions of dollars, then let them. And if a movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars because of a big name actor, then that person should be paid tens of millions of dollars or whatever the studio thinks that person is worth. They're not going to see the movie because of the great grip work done by David Ketterick.
If you don't like it, don't see movies with "overpaid" actors, don't go to sporting events with overpaid athletes, don't buy products or the stock of businesses with overpaid CEOs.
The job I can't believe didn't make the list was members of Congress. They get paid almost $200,000 a year for working about six months and they vote on their own pay raises. AND I pay for it with MY tax dollars, which I have less of a choice in than whether or not I should shell out $8 to see the latest Disney movie.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
I would love to see an article highlighting the poorest and the richest, taking into consideration their jobs (or lack of them), lifestyles (does traveling three hours per day in a bus to do a McJob count as lifestyle?), health, families and social relationships.
I'll tell you why those people (except for the skycap) earn so much money: It's because society has its collective eyes permanently tuned towards the best performers in the totally false and misguided idea that they too could one day reach those heights. The article states factually that for every actor who makes $10 million, there are 1000 that wash dishes, and how many actors are there that truly act well enough to really deserve that $10 million?
It might be a sign of positive thinking to look towards society's best performers, but it would do society the world of good to seek some realism instead and realise that they themselves will never make it up there and look for more practical alternatives and to stop praising bad actors, corrupt CEOs, boring politicians and othodontists as if they were god.
The longshoremen make so much money because they do a dangerous job. Longshoremen have a higher death rate than police officers and firemen, due to a mixture of accidents (dock accidents are unbelievably common) and continuous exposure to diesel fumes.
Imagine standing behind a diesel truck (crane or other piece of heavy equipment), in the space between two stacks of TEUs for 8 hours a day. You could smoke 10 packs of cigarettes a day and not be exposed to fumes like that.
Longshoremen arent being paid for their work; they're being paid for their lives.
Flying any aircraft is so much more challenging than driving a bus that I don't know where to begin. To name a few challenges that do NOT have corresponding issues on the bus:
- Landing, landing, landing (unless parking a bus is a challenge for you)
- Engine failure (buses just coast to a stop)
- Navigation (Ever had a bus wind up 50 miles off course because the prevailing winds changed direction? Didn't think so...)
- Altitude effects like hypoxia (unless your bus happens to be driving up to Mount Everest Base camp)
- Gas turbine engines (when's the last time you saw a bus with one of these?)
- Weight and balance (ever had to shuffle passengers around on a bus to prevent a takeoff crash?)
And I haven't even scratched the surface! I could go into the thousands of emergency scenarios that bus drivers don't even DREAM about, but for which pilots must study and undergo training every few months using a full-motion simulator.Don't get me wrong: some of the top-level United pilots just before United Airlines filed Chapter 11 were making ridiculous amounts of money, and it contributed to the company's restructuring. You can thank their stupid union for that ridiculousness (ALPA). But reducing their profession to "glorified bus driver" status is simply unenlightened balderdash.
He's in Canada and flies both civilian and military. He makes about what I make as a software developer. Certainly not those huge wages. I mean, Canadian airlines are practically bankrupt, they couldn't pay that kind of money.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
When I fly, I've noticed that the pilot is always on the plane with me, but the engineers who wrote the auto-pilot software are NOT on the plane with me.
That's what I like about human pilots. Their interests are aligned with my interests.
all the people on here say the pilots have it hard? 12 hours of work? phhhh join the military!, as a marine my normal day is 12 hrs, and its 10x harder than any job listed in that mess.. the country as a whole depened on people like me to do the job to, so if thats not enough stress-level for you i dont know what is. note, just because Bush gets $xBillion for "military/Iraq" purposes, doesn't mean the people in the military see a dime, yay... I'll be voting next election for sure"
Mod parent up!!!!
You make some good points about HR people that most laymen would never realize.
/. : ignorance. People just don't know what these jobs entail. They see one part of it, think it must be easy, and therefore not worth any money.
/. seem to think I only work the 8 hours at the wedding on Saturday, charge $4,000, and leave. They don't seem to consider the several hours of prep work before the wedding, or the 40 or 50 hours of work retouching and editing the photos afterward, or the cost of all my business overhead, including equipment, insurance, rent, phone, internet, etc etc etc. Oh, and I gotta eat and provide my own benefits, too.
I think that's the problem with just about all the jobs listed in this article, and all the bitching in these comments on
I'm a wedding photographer (#10 on the list), and a lot of people on
Seems to me people should walk a mile in your shoes before they judge. Might as well ask some programmer, "Well, what does it really cost you to work for your company? I mean, gas mileage to and fro, right? So how can you possibly defend the fact that you charge your employer $50,000 a year for your services?!? It's not like it costs you anything! You're just stealing from your poor employer!"
Oh yeah, there's that whole "sucking away my life" thing.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Wait... it's already +5 Insightful.
None of the premises you state about cut-throat competition hold in high end real estate. The market is held tightly by a few country-club mavens who give it up on retirement and not before. Try breaking into their turf. They won't lower their fees for you. They will laugh at you and you will not be laughing back - you will instead watch them leisurely dine with the other blue bloods at the polo club, wondering why you are near the kitchen and they have a private room.
We know the spectrum of photographers. Most do a stellar job, others do not. Same as with any trade. The most professional wedding photographer we know had to increase her prices to just over $3000 last year. Granted she is one of the best and on average takes between 800 - 1000 picture to which the bride and groom get all the proofs from those photos. However, that industry isn't cheap. She's spent over $45k in the last year setting up an 8 Terrabyte SAN. On average she does about 30 weddings a year and then senior and school pictures as well. So that's usually around 40k 15MB or larger image files per year...which adds up quickly. This doesn't include the some $1500 a year she has to spend to buy newer and better digital cameras for the latest and greatest.
Everyone remarked on how much cheaper digital photo revolution has been, but really I question that at the professional level. Only in the last year has top quality digital camera's been available and still, its another $1000 - $2000 a year to get the latest and greatest, not to mention the upgrades in IT she has had to do.
Yeah, it may seem like its a profitable gig, and I guess for the average joe smoe wedding photographer, yeah, its a nice pay check. But to those that are true professionals, its an expensive trade.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Average elk speed: 28 mph
28mph = 12.5171 meters/second = 1 elk unit
Speed of light: ~299,792,458 meters/second
Answer: 23,950,632.16 elks!!!
When walmart can hire them for $2 each why is everyone else paying them $7 and higher!. That's more than 300% of market rate!
BR>
Disclaimer: I am kiddding
I started a business with a college friend of mine. He is talented in advertising and marketing and has no clue how to run a business. That's why he asked me to become his partner and run the damn company. Yes he does a lot of the apperance and grunt work of coming up with slogans and such, but he can work 6 hour days and get away with it because he is that good.
I on the other hand spend an average of 14 hours a day in the office during the first year doing everything from strategy to accounting.
We are now in our third year and doing about $850k a year in business and now have 4 full time and 2 part-time employes along with four interns every semester. Think my job's gotten easier? No I work an average 60 hour work week. As the "General Manager" (aka CEO without the letters) of the company, I am required to attend an average of 3 business functions a week from weekly "Local business executive's breakfasts" to "Big client's wife's sucky art gallery opening".
Granted, I don't do much of the mundane billing, collecting and now have a secatary that does a lot of my dictation work, but now I have to deal with motivating employees, looking out on the horizon.
What was my salary last year? $175k plus $55k from profits. As an original founder, I get 30% of the profits, co-found/partner gets 50% and the other 20% is divided amoung the employees. Average employee salary is about $38k with all bonuses and benefits.
Yeah, so we get paid more than the average empolyee, but I built this company with hardwork, took a risk leaving a comfortable 9 - 5 job, and by the grace of god got lucky.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
And now, a poem:
Tricklen' down (tribute to the dot-com era)
Unspent money from above
=>into capitalist machinery
=>$ for booze and babes, and debt ne'er to repay
Yes that sucked =D.
on a serious note, unspent money of the wealthy does not have the same affects as spend money. Unspent money is typically invested in stocks and bonds and such. When done on a large scale lots of investments make money more available for people to borrow. This may seem like a good thing, but it can make it too easy to borrow. This was the case during the 'roaring twenties,' and lead up to the great depression. It probably also had a hand in our latest economic downturn.
Spent money doesn't create debt, and it stimulates the economy.
I might be wrong about this though (in a "blame the lender" for lending money they won't get back sort of way), but at this hour I can't fault my logic (or read it for that matter...).
Where are class-action lawyers on the list?!?
I'm so sick of hearing about lawyers "representing" the interests of millions of consumers, where the end result is that the consumer (who may well have been bilked out of hundreds or thousands of dollars) may get some token of $10-20 (only after jumping through hoops to "qualify"). Meanwhile, the lawyers walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars for their contingency fee. (The CD price-fixing settlement comes to mind, as an obvious example...)
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
of course the top cause of divorce is money problems, but at least you got good pictures of your wedding right? The hell with the cost! :)
stay frosty and alert
Actually I think you completely missed my point. I was arguing only your statement that multi-million $/year contracts were necessary to sufficiently motivate players and draw talent. As far as whether government should set limits... I wouldn't be interested in that one bit. Government is terrible in that regard.
In fact I will argue that goverment does extremely poorly choosing appropriate compensation for even it's own employees. I work for a government agency and have almost single-handedly reduced our IT costs by over $150,000/yr. I have a co-worker who not only hasn't helped reduced agency costs, but who's poor decisions have actually increased our costs.
The co-worker puts in exactly 37.5 hours of work a week (two paid 15 minute breaks each day) and walks out the door within a minute (one way or the other) of quiting time. I, on the other hand regularly put in 45-50 hours (more often 45 than 50.) In return for all of this I get $6k/year less then the coworker because pay is basically tied directly to # of years on the job.
This complete lack of accountability and rewards for good work is one of the biggest problems with government pay systems today. The system itself promotes poor work ethics and government waste.
In this system, the "smart" choice is to work only the exact hours you must and to choose the "easiest" options regardless of the cost. So, just make your own job easier.. after all it's just taxpayer money. No ROI to worry about.. and if things get really bad (like budget cuts) it's the lower-end people who get the axe anyhow.
n/t
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
See where you are:
Go ahead, take this test, I bet you score better than 85% of all people. Yes, that's pretty privileged.
What those beneath you get:
Poverty is not only low income and no assets. It is a condition of exclusion from the institutions and organizations of modern life. In many countries law courts, banks, education, health services, roads, water, electricity, even respect, are not available to the poor. It is harder for them to get permissions to open businesses, and they are often forced to pay bribes. I first became aware of this in 1972, when Robin and I wrote a check to a Kenyan family. When they tried to bank it, they were told they needed to file a lengthy application, with two recommendations by "respectable persons," to open an account. Neither an illiterate person nor one with no connections would have been able to do that. In most of the world, the poor live in a society distinct from the affluent - different institutions, organizations, and customs, and little communication between the two. The poor are looked down on and denied the courtesies available to others.
The growing disparity between you and them
Gini Index
"Estimates for the early years should be taken only as rough guides, but it's safe to say that income inequality is at levels not seen since the climax of the 1920s boom and the collapse into Depression. After peaking in 1932, the gini began a long downtrend that ended in 1968. It's been almost straight up ever since, pausing only during the mid-1970s and early-1990s recessions."
Words to men, as air to birds.
The tobacco lawyers who prosecuted that huge multi-billion dollar anti-tobacco lawsuit on behalf of the federal government stood to make the equivalent of $100,000/hr. Yes, I said $100,000/hour! I kid you not. (The only reason they might not have gotten it is because their win may have been overturned. I'm not sure of the final outcome.)
By the way, guess which party those lawyers have in their back pockets.
If you guessed the Democrats, help yourself to a cigar.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Kids with rich parents
These @#$%@#$%@# are almost always complete brats. They should be smacked upside the head.
Musicians on MTV
Man I hate these idiots. They're so full of themselves, it makes me sick.
Oil industry executives
No blood for oil, yo.
Music industry executives
The music industry is a heaping pile of vanilla cow dung and it's these guys fault.
Professional athletes
These guys are funded by advertising. Advertising is tax deductable. The way I see it, one third of Shaq's incoming is my tax money at work.
Carson Daily
I can't stand him. It's amazing that teen listen to him seeing as he holds them in utter distain. I generally like kids, but after seeing them on Carson Daily's show I feel like slapping every thirteen year old I see.
All they do is lie on their backs and do what comes natural, and I'll bet the ones that have me are wrapped to shag such a studly male specimen like myself
You want experienced pilots that can get the job done, and right the first time. You screw up landing at PDX on an icy day and you're the last flight in before they close the airport because of the weather, you're going into the river, no second chance. Or you end up circling Portland and sacrificing your life to save your passengers.
Help us build a better map!
I guess what is so offensive about the longshoremen is that a man could pull in a living wage with by the sweat of his labour.
Others have complained that they don't work hard enough. I never hear Slashdotters saying that about computer nerds who sit around eating potatoe chips tap tap tapping on a keyboard.
All credit to a union that puts money into the hands of the working class.
_khl
Any job with a TLA title beginning with "C" and ending with "O".
Nathan's blog
As a matter of fact, things have gotten so automated that a pilot friend of mine told me that the flight crew of the future will consist of only one pilot and a dog. The pilot's job is to feed the dog. The dog's job is to keep the pilot from touching anything.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
People are paid what they're worth, unless it's a government subsidised job. Welcome to America, leave if you want to complain.
Do many pilots have a lot of experience doing this, you think? Does this happen often?
Consider the fact that their 'off' hours are usually away from home. There is a LOT of work that they do outside of flying. This doesn't count in their per-hour charge.
;)
Consider the fact that our off hours are usually away from society, wasting time in stupid things like Internet discussion forums and such. There's a lot of work to be done outside of the regular programming hours, such as fixing someone's computer, programming a VCR, and so on.
They spend a lot of time gaining hours in small aircraft and as co-pilots of large aircraft. And they get dirt-pay for that.
We spend a lot of time doing hundreds of lines of code for totally cryptic crap such as "Biojava Protease Factory Method Implementation" being paid nothing.
They can't drink 12 hours before going on the job.
I asume you're referring to alcohol. Most of us are only addicted to caffeine anyway.
They work odd hours.
You bet.
They are controlling a big gas tank with an aluminum shell and 300 people inside, all while moving 600+ mph in weather conditions that prevent you from seeing out side.
That sounds like the slashdot effect to me
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Financial pundits!
This website says that the official reports on the 1988 Airbus A320 Paris airshow crash concluded pilot error was the cause:4 -8/hw1.h tml
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~szewczyk/cs29
"Three of the 136 passengers were killed."
The software bug that was found was for airconditioning control, and the delay in the engines providing enough power to clear the trees was to be expected in that class of plane.
The article is not saying that all pilots are overpaid. Rather, that *major* airline are paid significantly more that other pilots for essentially the job. Same training, same experience, same hours, same work; but the *major* airline pilots are paid 40% more.
Sounds like the writer was making assumptions with little facts to back up anything. Wedding photographers can get expensive, but I think you do get what you pay for, to some extent. I forgot how much my wedding photographer cost, but I think the expense was justified. He took pictures, adjusted light and settings, thought up creative shots for my wife and I, herded everyone together for group shots, and took random pics during the reception, then put it all in an album for us. There's more to it than just press the shutter button. I doubt that skycaps make as much as the article said unless they work at LAX or something. I do not know if they are paid like restaurant servers in that they might get paid $2 per hour + tips. The ones I've seen do more than just unload your bags. They usually check your bags, put the tags on them, and then check you in right at the curb so you can walk straight to your gate. I agree that most CEOs make way too much, while all the time laying off more employees. One funny anecdote I've read lately is to outsource CEOs only which would save plenty.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
Supposing two elks bore down on you together? No, they'd have to have be on a line...
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
Somebody beat me to it. Curse my high viewing threshold....
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
"Regular women"! That "set" includes the likes on mingers.com
So work for a year or two and save a little money. Even $1,000 can be extremely profitable in the right places.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
"rich" under the IRS definition is
making about $50K jointly or around $25K as
a single
Where on earth did you come up with that? There is no IRS definition of "rich."
Politicians talking about taxing the rich are NOT talking about $50,000 joint annual income.
This is a standard conservative tactic: defend tax cuts for the very rich by mixing in the very rich with the merely affluent (to use your term, which is a good one).
I guess I am just full of bias; the thought of longshoremen being overpaid tens-of-thousands of dollars does not enrage me the same way executives getting overpaid hundreds-of-thousands (and millions) does. Then again, the longshoreman's children will most likely have to work for their living (or are the jobs hereditary?), while the CEO's progeny can use interest and trust funds until they get bored.
I would rather see the longshoremen continue their extortion racket and have a decent middle-class lifestyle, than have their wages reduced......and allow executives' salaries to absorb the profit. No thanks.
==============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
they reserve the copyright so they can charge outrageous prices for reprints, xmas cards, etc.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
The powerful simply bent the rules so they gain more than their fair share at the expense of all of the rest of us. This cripples our economy as it's a clear disincentive to labor.
Ah, a disgruntled commie... Your kind still exist...
Excessive affluence is a sure sign of a corrupt society
No it's not. I give you a point that it can be a sign, but it doesn't have to be. F.ex. in many South American countries there are drug lords with excessive affluence. They exist because they can corrupt the system to allow them to exist. So in this case yes, you might say your point is valid. But there's also a 2nd venue which allow people to become rich, it's called free market. You have an idea, and you're smart enough, you can convert this idea into money generating business. In a truly free market environment this can happen in a legally and morally correct way. Some of our business leaders are corrupt, but it doesn't mean all are. You only hear about the bad ones in the media.
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
Just because you don't see the value of entertainment sports provide doesn't mean the rest of us should be punished by having less motivated less qualified athletes.
I agree with your post in general, it should be said however, that athletes should not be motivated by amount of money they can make. Same applies to wanna-be computer programmers. You should do it because you like it, you're good at it, and you're willing to spend the time necessary to stay good at it.
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
How does questioning authority make one into a communist? I'd bet you don't even know what "communist" means. It really has little to do with either wealth or power. In fact, it actually means a socialist who doesn't believe in private land ownership. As well, it's a typically abusive, derogatory and narrow-minded comment from those who are sadly uninformed and have nothing factual to contribute to the discussion at hand. See:
The Art Of Controversy - Stratagem XXXII"
As for your position on excessive affluence, it's clear you're not a student of history. Try reading, it's very informative. As well, if I were you, I'd learn something about the terms you bandy about. You came off as someone who's quite ignorant about the entire issue. Furthermore, you should always troll anonymously.
Words to men, as air to birds.
How does questioning authority make one into a communist?
m ), it's pretty interesting.
It doesn't. What you were doing was not questioning authority but stating that excessive wealth is a sign of corruption. And this I don't agree with. The reason I called you a commie was actually another of your posts in this thread where you linked to http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/IncPov01.html
I'd bet you don't even know what "communist" means
I grew up in a communist society, so I know what's behind the words. The ideas behind it are so naive, it's not even funny. And forget about implementation.
Thank you for the link (http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/erist32.ht
Try reading, it's very informative.
I do read. Quite a lot.
You came off as someone who's quite ignorant about the entire issue.
Well, maybe. And you came out as someone who's logical reasoning needs polishing/refreshing.
Furthermore, you should always troll anonymously.
Certainly. At least we agree on something.
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
Since wealth and authority go hand in hand, I feel that I was questioning authority. As well, posting a link to a left wing site hardly implies I'm a communist. Nor does it imply the information is not useful or factual. As for growing up in a communist state, that doesn't guarantee that you understand political theory.
As for the link, it's my pleasure. Sorry if I came across so hard, I tend to whenever someone falsely accuses me of being a communist.
I suspect we'd agree on quite a bit if we really sat down and really discussed most issues. These brief opinion bytes really leave a lot out.
By the way, thanks, I really do appreciate any and all comments.
Words to men, as air to birds.
You thought you made nothing check this out: http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=15 68_0_7_0_C
Preschool Teacher ($21,907) no wonder why education in the US blows
Made a lot of good points. Mod this shit up.
For being a true fan. Surprised with this level of sports discussion on Slashdot.
Tell what someone who is unemployed, but moderating a user contributed website with no journalistic integrity, is actually contributing to society at large?