É já uma série de pelo menos 3 artigos que o New York Times desta semana dedica ao tema dos hiatos de pagamento entre os ricos e os muito ricos.À primeira vista pode parecer um tema superfluo ou até perverso... com tanta gente que não tem o suficiente para comer estamos agora a preocuparnos com os apenas ricos! O que acho interessantissimo, até do ponto de vista económico, é o tipo de incentivos que se geram em termos de escolha de carreiras profissionais: perdem-se bons médicos para Wall Street, ou bons obstetras para clínicas de cirurgia plástica! Será que este é o melhor caminho a seguir? Mais vale então olhar para este tema com cuidado e não apenas empurrar para o lado como algo que não interessa porque há mais que fazer.
Este é aliás um problema não apenas dos EUA, mas com que Portugal se debate há anos. Segue o artigo de hoje na íntegra.
___________
When the Joneses Can’t Keep Up
Published: December 1, 2006
An article in yesterday’s Times about obstetricians who prefer working in Botox boutiques is a reminder that the growing gap between the rich and superrich has an impact on those of us who are neither. The article, by Natasha Singer, reported that family practitioners and emergency room physicians have also jumped over into the cosmetic treatment business because the money is so much better.
As The Times has noted in a series of recent articles, the very richest earners are increasing their earnings at twice the rate of their onetime peers, and the average-rich are taking resentful note. Investment bankers are jealous of hedge-fund wunderkinds and, from the sound of it, almost every last person in Silicon Valley is envious of the founders of YouTube (with the likely exception of the Google billionaires who bought their company).
It’s hard for people flying in coach to have much patience with those in first class bemoaning their lack of a personal jet. Neither policymakers nor society at large need sympathize with the longing of millionaires to become billionaires. But we do need to worry about the effects on society as a whole when members of the educated elite think they are grossly underpaid. The more they feel as if they are losing ground against their peers, the more likely they are to ditch professions in which the pay is only good — like delivering babies — in favor of less useful careers in which the compensation is off the charts — like eliminating lines from wealthy people’s foreheads.
America has long had a problem attracting enough well-trained people to important but not particularly well-compensated positions, like public defender, social worker or teacher. But an era in which a cancer researcher moves over into health-care management consulting because the pay is better — as Louis Uchitelle reported in The Times this week — is something else entirely.
Part of the explanation is undoubtedly a tax code that has sent the incomes of the wealthiest sliver of the nation into hyperdrive. Another might be the spike in education costs, which send many new doctors, lawyers and scientists out into the world armed with a diploma and a six-figure debt. But the bottom line seems to be that in 21st-century America, more people can’t feel successful unless they’re making a killing.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário