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Comment by alextheparrot | Hacker News Reader

Are you familiar enough with Baumol’s to comment on why we don’t see this effect in, for example, medicine vs basic biochemistry? Presumably there is a lot of overlap in these cohorts, but most research jobs pay significantly less than research jobs.

Both industries seem to be “more productive” these days as well, with massive gains in biological research techniques over the last 20 years.

I guess it is easy to see something and give it a name, but the wikipedia description didn’t leave me with a very solid understanding.

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> but most research jobs pay significantly less than research jobs.

I think your comment has a typo, but my answer to the question I believe you are asking would be that there are far more people seeking to have medical jobs than there are positions available in licensed medical schools.

There is no shortage of qualified people seeking to do medicine. They just can't do it as there are hard licensing restrictions on who can do it and those restrictions require formal degrees.

Of the people I know in the more poorly paid biochemistry research field, most have tried or are trying to jump over to medicine/medical research. They just can't get admitted to med school or can't get approved in some other way. There is no rise in the price of labour because there are just so many potential and willing workers that medicine is not altering the supply of labour for biochemistry research in a meaningful way.

In the case of the developers, there are no restrictions on who can be one. There are no formal requirements at all. You could be a high school dropout and if you can code well, there is work for you. If you have the skills, you can go be a developer. It is more as though nobody wanted to be in medicine as biochem paid more. In that scenario, there would be very few doctors.

Your correction was correct, thanks for still seeking to answer the question.

I think I generally agree with your premise -- there are large gates in place and the licensing is much harder to achieve than a college degree. Though I think this setup breaks down partially (But not completely) when we view that PhD biochemists are still paid far less than doctors even with roughly equivalent time horizons and some level of institutional gating (4-6 years for PhD, maybe a PostDoc).

Either way, this is a fun new frame to play around with. Thanks for your time!

Doctors are limited by the American Medical Association which sets the limit on residency slots. Basic biochemistry is done by low-paid grad students, a large percentage (possibly a majority at some schools) of whom are from lower cost of living countries, particularly China and India.

The AMA has been lobbying to raise the limit. The issue is residents are unproductive and thus need government subsidy for hospitals to train.

The limit is where it is because the AMA put it there because they were afraid of the "physician glut" ruining salaries. They're probably responsible for around as many American deaths as many of the world's worst dictators.

Pretty clever retcon in their text to make themselves out to be heroes, if your source is the AMA.

Vote whichever way you want, I'm absolutely right:

* https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-docto...

* https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/14/us/ama-board-studies-ways...

* https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/thanks-to-doctors-there-a...

* https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-03-01-19970600...

>The issue is residents are unproductive and thus need government subsidy for hospitals to train.

This is so hilariously wrong. Hospitals make TONS of money from the work of residents who get paid like 50k doing 200k of work. A residency hospital, Hanneman, closed and the spots there were auctioned off for $55M to other hospitals.

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