This thread seems to have few comments on the article and several on the title. It's not an HN survey, it's an article regarding a research paper [1].<p>IMO -- this kind of data could/should benefit teachers and researchers who want to argue that their benefit to society isn't reflected in the existing high school/undergrad/graduate metrics. Instead of paying teachers/researchers the wage that reflects an equilibrium between available supply and job demand, maybe we could offer something that offsets their (positive) externality. I suppose it only makes sense for public schools since private entities aren't focused on things like this. But there's a lot of debate over public school funding and this seems like a great input to that debate.<p>[1] <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1324424" rel="nofollow">http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1324424</a>
Note that GDP is only a proxy for value to society. It's based on what's measurable, not on what's valuable.<p>Prisons and wars increase GDP but make us worse off. Likewise, many free apps (e.g. Google Maps) significantly improve our lives but don't significantly impact GDP.<p>This matters because the approach used to measure externalities may undervalue software engineers and teachers and overvalue defense contractors and lobbyists.<p>Edit: This is really important for software. Software has low marginal cost so the market price (and therefore measured GDP) trends towards 0 but the (mostly unmeasured) consumer surplus is huge.<p>Another Edit: Note that externalities for defense contractors and lobbyists actually weren't measured here and probably couldn't be reliably measured with this technique due to international differences, but they made great examples for my explanation.
Something I've always questioned is why certain jobs in the United States are expected to be tipped but others aren't:<p>Why does a bartender at a bar that isn't very busy who simply pours me a draft beer out of a tap deserve a dollar when a guy making burritos at Chipotle during the lunch rush who can't take a break for 3 hours straight doesn't get any tips? I've had bartenders hand me a can of beer for 2 dollars, I come back 20 minutes later and ask for another and they say "ok but I'm going to charge you extra because you didn't tip".<p>If I ever did that when I worked at any fast food job I've ever had I would have been fired.<p>Either have a tipping culture or don't, but don't have social punishments for skipping tipping on bartenders or restaurant waiters but then don't tip me EVER when I work a different minimum wage job that can be just as hectic.<p>Many bartenders and waiters take the approach of tipping constantly at other low paying service jobs, which is very admirable.<p>But others will berate you if you mention that you don't tip for every drink at a bar while they themselves see no hypocrisy or problem that they aren't tipping low paid workers in other industries.<p>Before someone mentions that some of those tipping jobs can have pay that's less than minimum wage - remember that if tips don't make up the difference then the employer is legally required to pay the minimum wage for that shift.
An easy example for the opposite question of "Which professions are paid too little given their value to society? ".<p>Hospital nurses in UK, they perform life saving work and paid rubbish money.
Managers, as a group.<p>A good manager on the right project can make a huge contribution to that project's success. Ditto a good senior leader running a large organisation. I have no problem with these people being compensated accordingly.<p>However, many people in management positions aren't particularly good at it, yet still command compensation as if they were.<p>In far too many cases, a manager is even making their organisation <i>less</i> effective overall than if they just left and let the people doing the work figure something out between them, yet still commanding that high compensation.
It would be interesting to see these results cross-checked, by applying the methods from one job to another - for example by applying the methods used for law and engineering (Cross-country regression of GDP on <job> per capita) to the other fields listed.<p>Personally I find the results presented surprising - especially the claim of research being worth 25% of GDP, which seems very high to me.
BadicLly any profession with high levels of credential based regulation and supply constraining that reduces competition.<p>Dentistry is a great example that forbids even simple procedures to be done by non certified practitioners.
I think we can find groups of people in every profession that are paid too much given their value to society. I wouldn't say one profession over the other is overpaid. Someone is paying for that profession. I think there's a lot of tenured college professors who are grossly overpaid for the little value they bring to teaching, but as a whole, professors do bring value to society. It's a tough question to answer.
The title of that post is "Which jobs do economists say create the largest spillover benefits for society?" and is about a paper "Taxation and the Allocation of Talent"<p><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1324424" rel="nofollow">https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1324424</a>
The main reason for this is government regulation artificially limiting supply. For example, being a lawyer isn't that hard. You could intern with a lawyer and read books on law yourself and get just as good an education. That's what our founding fathers did. However the lawyers want as few people as possible to enter their profession so they make incredibly stupid requirements for becoming a lawyer, such as having to have an undergrad degree.(which can be for literally anything) Policies like this are horrible because they drive up the cost of both lawyers and school. It also lowers the quality of education because educators are now in a position of unfair power over prospective lawyers since they can say who can and can't practice law.