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Comment by tunetine | Hacker News Reader

No, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because doctors have unlimited demand and are considered more highly skilled?

Doctors are a somewhat different case, at least in the US, because medical boards (per specialty) control supply by limiting the number of new doctors being trained (via annual limits on Residency seats.) It is more of a cartel in that respect. Imagine if we only trained 100 Java engineers a year and the existing Java engineers themselves decided on how many they train per year...that would be the analogy.

Totally off topic, but isn't it bizarre how our politicians nor anyone else in the overseeing agencies/industries can seem to understand why "healthcare" is so expensive...until we actually open up the market for entry of new physicians there will be no solution. Yet I never hear this in popular media.

> until we actually open up the market for entry of new physicians there will be no solution

You do realize that tens of thousands of people graduate from med school every year and go on to do 6 years of residency where they make about $15 / hr right? Maybe the reason you don't hear 'popular media' talk about it is that they would look ridiculous.

How about 100$ bread? Is that a shortage? People literally starving to death, because they can't pay for food?

But supply is meeting demand at that point, right?

  But supply is meeting demand at that point, right?

It implies a shortage, because of the price point. Because demand far outstrips supply, which drives price up.

And now to bring things full circle, if tech salaries are very high, doesn't this ALSO imply a shortage of programmers, as demand is far outstripping supply?

I'd say no. We can't compartmentalize things like this. I fully support bringing in foreign talent but the logic is flawed. I want lower wages across the economy but the conversation must start in the board room. Nobody, other than the investor, should be making more than a certain multiplier of the minimum wage. The CEO who got fired from HP and went on to be the CEO at Oracle? Is there a shortage of CEOs? I'm sure if you look within your organization, you'll find at least one person willing to bite the bullet and become your next CEO if you need.

Sorry if this was a little off topic. I feel uneasy about our growing inequality in our economy but we can't fix it outside of the boardroom. Did you know that board members get paid? I surely didn't until not too long ago. Why do they get paid? I mean I'm not talking compensation for travel. I'm talking six figure compensation. Do we have a shortage of people who are willing to sit on your board?

I'm okay with CEOs making more money, but what I can't stand is the golden parachutes and lack of responsibility.

Apparently they do that because otherwise CEOs would never take risks, for good reason.

You can't be CEO of several companies, so a CEO is fully invested in the success of that one company. From the point of view of a CEO, it makes sense for the company to not take risks.

On the other hand, investors can invest in diverse companies and expect some of them to fail and some of them to win big. From the point of view of an investor, it makes sense for the company to take risks.

Therefore investors pay CEOs a lot and give them golden parachutes to prevent CEOs and investors from having opposite incentives.

I am not ok with a golden parachute at all, especially for people like John Thain but also for all publicly traded companies.

What exactly is risk here? That the person is looking for another job (which tends to be succesfull) and the he is not super uber rich, just very rich?

I give you that being good ceo is hard and all that. But seriously, calling it financial risk is ridiculous.

Shortages are irrespective of the severity of price. Shortages imply their is enough demand that normally price would increase to match supply at a given price point but cannot due to outside forces such as price controls.

What you and a bunch of other people confuse as a shortage is just basic market dynamics. Price is high but costs are also high (not a lot of people are willing and capable of being programmers). Cheaper developer prices would be great for businesses but price has to balance with cost and it is useless to call things a shortage for demand that is unsatisfied at a non-market price.

Example: would you say there is a shortage of Tesla model S's since I only am willing to pay $30,000. No, because the costs for a model S is higher than that and then everything would be considered a shortage at a low enough price point.

That is a terrible example. Above a certain wage, jobs disappear because there is not enough value created to pay a higher wage. That's quite different from a consumer buying a luxury good.

> Above a certain wage, jobs disappear because there is not enough value created to pay a higher wage.

Exactly my point! Economists don't call situations where costs (wages for developers) exceed what the market will pay (value created) "shortages".

Whether a good is "luxury" or not makes no difference.

That might be the way that economists describe shortages, but it is not the way that normal people describe shortages.

Personally, my definition of a shortage is "There is not enough of X, and it would be a very good thing to increase X".

Using my bread example, if bread cost 100$ a loaf, and people were literally starving to death because they couldn't buy bread or other food, then there IS a shortage of food.

It does not matter if "supply is equaling demand", because it is a very bad thing for food to cost 100$ a meal.

People would start baking their own bread.

Remember: The price of the good rises until it becomes profitable to produce more of the good or substitute the good with something else.

An economic shortage refers to a market failure and not a lack of resources and is only possible because of external factors like price controls, zoning laws, etc.

>There are almost always willing buyers at a lower-than-market-clearing price; the narrower technical definition doesn't consider failure to serve this demand as a "shortage", even if it would be described that way in a social or political context (which the simple model of supply and demand does not attempt to encompass).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage

You've avoided the fundamental issue.

If bread costs 100$ is it a good thing or a bad thing for society?

If the "market clearing price" for bread results in people starving to death, is this good or bad?

In this hypothetical situation, would it be a good idea or a bad idea for the government, or charities, or society/individuals in society to try and solve the high bread price problem?

Also, if people are literally starving to death, even if markets "clear", does it or does it not fit a normal person's definition of a "food shortage"?

Personally, my definition of shortage is "there isn't enough of X, and it would be a good idea to increase X".

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