Interesting argument which I doubt anyone here agrees with. After all, that would mean builders, miners, street sweepers and the like would be paid the highest, midwives somewhere in the middle and us right at the bottom.
Having said that, my first child nearly died during birth, and having a very good midwife who knew the signs, made all the right decisions, got the emergency doctors in at the right time - that service was utterly invaluable.
I'm all for the average midwife being paid somewhat more than me if it leads to more of these outcomes.
Midwifes have to make the correct decisions in a stressful situation in an extremely tight time period (seconds to minutes when it's the business end of things, so to speak), with limited information (no heartbeat readings at the end, can't see what's happening, just feel). Mother is screaming at the top of her lungs, partner has no idea what's going on (presuming not same sex). I seriously can't think of any job where the pressure is so intense for every single day of work, without exception. Maybe in triage, but that'd be about it.
A water treatment worker checks that various readings are within limits, and makes adjustments according to a set of standard operating procedures (presuming here, to be fair). I'd also presume there'd be a good number of check points during the journey of dam water to the final product in the pipes. There's no redundancy with midwifery that I can see.
If we ignore the risk aspect to third-party which parent and grand parent comment brought up, and instead focus on pressure, I can think of a few ones which might be worse than midwife and with lower pay. Highway road workers would be one. Having trucks going by in almost highway speed just meters next to you while you are focusing on the work is the kind of hell on earth that I would not want to expose myself to, and it doesn't even pay well.
Other high pressure jobs on the top of my head would be rescue swimmer, as the profession require careful psychoanalytical pressure testing to enter the training program. It also takes a special kind of person to work as a explosive chemist or at the bomb squad. I would also mention the military as an natural example of high pressure job. Each three has widely different degree of compensation compared to each other and even within the professions itself, and compared to midwifery it is all over the place.
There is no clean formula for X(Pressure) * Y(Third-party risk) = Z(Pay), and implementing one would change the compensation for a wast number of professions. I strongly doubt that midwifery would be the one that would see the biggest effect, but I would love to see a study exploring it.
Personal risk is a bit different because everyone has a choice about what is acceptable for them. Risk to others should not be your choice. The responsibility should be fixed and defined and therefore it's probably easier to make logical arguments about compensation rates.
Do you really believe that? 99% of us work in offices. You're in a bit of a bubble. Try going to a working man's club or the equivalent in your country to get a glimpse of the rest of society.
I've worked as bar staff in one. Talking about a tribal bubbles, that place was insane. I have also worked in offices, factories and fields. Currently doing geeky stuff with nightclubs for a pittance and massively preferring it when compared to some of the vastly more high paid work I have done.
There is groupthink on here, but I would say that HN perhaps isn't as cookie-cutter as you may suppose.
Huh?
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Quite the contrary, I think everybody agrees that risk is one important factor in salary expectations.
But workforce availability is another important factor!
If more people are available to work on scaffoldings rather than in a cosy office, well, scaffoldings will pay less!
And yes, I do understand that working in a office usually requires some training that not eveybody has the priviledge to afford: I'm just stating the facts, but I don't want to imply that this situation is fair.
- who takes the risk? (employer vs employee vs employer's clients vs state vs insurance)
- how transitive is the risk? (is A on the hook for B's risk as well?)
Only two dimensions but it's already a mess to think it through.
Paying a government-funded profession based on risk creates perverse incentives. You'd have midwives campaigning against introducing surgical gloves because they've got a family to feed and don't want to lose the risk pay.
This is horrendous and depressingly, probably true. It's important to see the incentive structure from both sides and to try and consider the unintended consequences of seemly good actions.
That doesn't detract from the position that midwives probably deserve higher pay. Tragically, the system we live in is that those that help increase capital get more pay, while those that actually do the meaningful foundational work (help bringing people to life, saving lives, teaching, all the things required to actually have a workforce that can generate capital) don't get paid enough.
To look at it from the other side, don't apologists for capital say that the boss should collect profit (and in perpetuity too) because of the "risk" she took to start the company?
Edit spelling.
I'm not sure why street sweepers would be risky. But the rest, sure. Miners are already paid quite a lot in many places.
She makes between $56 and $85 dollars a month. Working 12 months a year, for 50 years, she'll make a total of around $42,000 dollars. It's hard to argue that is remotely fair.
I'm not sure I agree or disagree with the statement, but only because I'm no longer convinced that capitalism is a viable system for allocating resources. In fact, I think this is a great argument against it. Dangerous jobs often do pay more, so people who need money will take these jobs -- even though the people who are desperate for a good paycheck are also often the least able to deal with the consequences of this risk. Financial desperation makes people ignore the long term, and people simply aren't good at understanding very-low-probability events. Dangerous jobs mean people will get hurt, which further limits their earning potential, and limits economic mobility. It's a terrible feedback loop.
But then, salaries have never made much sense to me. I'm not able to look at two friends and say "Yeah, X makes 10 times as much money as Y, and deserves it". Most of the people I know doing the most worthwhile things for society are also those earning the least money.