Employers are complaining about a "labor shortage"?
Just raise wages. That will send the proper signal to labor to train for the job.
This is the same for any other product or service in the economy.
https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-international-compen...
So by the time one becomes a full-blown doctor at age 32 (usually in the US, it only takes ~12 years to become a generalist doctor, who specializes in Internal Medicine, from the time s/he graduates from high school), s/he is making 250K. I wish I could make something like that as a programmer, but we know that that kind of salary is reserved for people who work for FAANG and/or are at the top of their game in the software field. For doctors, that is just the starting salary.
This is all to say that I disagree that the medical debt is much of a concern for US doctors once they become one. It is the unnecessarily convoluted path, which they have to take to become a doctor, that is more of the problem.
Are you factoring in opportunity cost during the years of not getting paid as much?
And not all doctors get paid that much; instead of average, a median would be better for comparison since some speciality get paid a lot, and some barely.
Also, at age 32, you already have 10 years of experience as a SWE and have been getting paid a lot, with chance to invest (same assumptions of financially responsible person for a doctor as you mentioned)
For the opportunity cost part, I have to agree with you to an extent. But let me present my rough calculation. I can probably make ~70-120K/year for 10 years before I reach the age of 32 (assuming I don't get laid off in the meantime and assuming I'm not lucky enough to be employed by FAANG). To make it simple, let's assume make an average of 95K/year (average of 70K+120K) for 10 years starting from when I graduate from college. So my take home pay in Los Angeles would be 65K/year. Suppose I can live relatively frugal in LA and save ~30K/year for those 10 years, my investments would have probably grown to about 415K in 10 years (assuming there is no recession and the returns for my investment averages 7%/year; https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...). That is NOT a lot of head-start for those who chose to do programming (or cannot afford to go to med school).
Remember that programmers are actually one of the better-paid professionals among those who graduate from college every year. Also you have to keep in mind that a lot professions have issues keeping their jobs when they get older (e.g., old programmers tend to have a difficult time finding programming jobs while maintaining their senior salaries unless they are really good at what they do; employers will prefer find young, fresh programmers who are willing to be paid less and can spend a lot more time at work than older programmers, but that's for another discussion). Doctors don't have that problem (at least for now because the supply of doctors is artificially limited in the US).
Also, if you are really hard-working (and greedy) as a doctor, you can take two jobs (as a hospitalist or attending) at once. I know two doctors (from my country), who live in CA suburb and make ~500K+ by working at two hospitals (of course, they have to work 6 days a week, alternating 3 days at each hospital). Alternatively, you can run your own practice (either as primary income or just a side hustle on weekends). My wife used to volunteer at several private clinics in NY metro area. Most of the generalist doctors (i.e. Internal Medicine) she volunteered for see ~30-40 patients a day (actually one doctor sees 70-80 patients a day!). They make ~$80 net (that is assuming the patients uses medicaid/medicare, which is actually at the lower end of the pay per visit) from each patient (because my wife enters the code and helps with miscellaneous things around the clinic for them). These clinicians are making each year ~$8030 patients20 days per month * 12 months a year = $576K/year. All of these doctors she volunteered are above 60+ years old. I am not exaggerating about that. Of course, this is in NY-like metro area where population is diverse and dense. Some rural area doctors wouldn't have such opportunity to make that much money, but what I'm saying is that generalist doctors sure have opportunity to make significantly more than 250K/yr average.
All in all, I'm not buying that the opportunity cost of becoming a doctor is a sacrifice one mad. It is (in my opinion) part of the trade-off one have to make to get a steady and pretty good income for the remaining 30 years of your working life (assuming one retires at 62, but if you are a generalist doctor--i.e. not related to ICU or surgery--you can work until 65+ just like the anesthesiologist from my host family. With 250K/year income (https://www.kaptest.com/study/mcat/doctor-salaries-by-specia...), you can easily catch up for the missed opportunity cost in a reasonable time frame.
How much do programmers get paid in the usa compared to france? Lawyers? Genetic engineers? Police?
Literally all of them get paid a lot more. Our gdp/capita is like 45% higher.
Another factor is that here on HN, aa lot of people are programmers who work in a field without an AMA or ABA controlling the number of people who are allowed to work in a field (under penalty of fines or imprisonment), nor does our field have a governing body that has greatly limited foreign competition (in fact, the US government has generally created immigration visas to increase the supply of programmers, even if not to the levels demanded by high tech employers).
On top of that, we constantly hear about companies being "unable to hire", with no mention of the salary. Like, not even a peep. Or open offices, or obnoxious white board exams on inverting binary trees, or open distain for anyone who has family obligations, or...
I remember, back during some of the earlier debates in the early 2000s about the H1B, a tech CEO testified in congress about a critical worker they were trying to hire. They wanted someone with a PhD in a genetics-related field, specialized programming ability, and unix sysadmin skills.
Feinstein asked "what are you offering?". The answer: "90k a year, "generous" options - and a lease on a new BMW!".
Feinstein answered "what was the name of your company again?" and everyone laughed (right, ultra wealthy Feinstein would consider 90k a year livable in Palo Alto). What she didn't say is: "uh, why do you think you can hire someone with a difficult doctoral degree that takes 7 years to complete with a 50% attrition rate, specialized programming skills that take years to develop, and unix sysadmin skills that would make someone highly employable without all that other stuff, for 75% of the salary you'd offer to 2 year MBA or 3 year law degree from programs with a 99% completion rate".
Raise wages. Or, even better, let the market work. Allow immigrants to come here without letting tech companies tell them what they have to study, where they have to live, or what jobs they're allowed to work. Allow all people, immigrant or born here, to choose their profession in response to their own interests and external market signals.
You know, "raise wages", compete, put up or shut up. No, it doesn't end discussion, but it's usually a very compelling argument.
Here's a quick experiment, click clearancejobs.com [1], as of this writing it lists 50K+ well paying jobs (high 6-figs) fully reserved for US Citizens, especially those whose antecedents can be traced. And this usually means people with surnames like Smith, Green, Johnson et al. And, this is just one website, over say a job cycle time of a few weeks. Now one can extrapolate that there are hundreds of thousands of such jobs.
Now H1b is 65K Visas a year, Let's say that 80% of H1b are fraudulent - which it is NOT, but just for the sake of argument, let's say 80% are outright fakes - this is more than offset by very high paying US citizen only jobs in on a single website, over just a few weeks!
Now salaries might not be going up as as much as some wish for, but in an economy there are many more variables than just supply & demand, that determine wages. I would also remind you tech worker salaries are already among the highest, if not the highest, salaries in any professional class. Only very specialized doctors like Neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons etc make more.
To somehow say that H1b is the root of all evil can only come from a very spoilt entitled class - dare-I-say White American Males - that has all the bountiful benefit of an economy with FULL employment, Actually FULL++ employment. And yet, they are just so fragile, entitled and selfish....
H1b is, at most, a _minor_ inconvenience to a set of very spoilt brats, used to having it their way, or throwing a tantrum otherwise. 65K jobs is not even a droplet in the ocean that's the US economy, and yet the fact that this issue gets some much coverage is a testament to the power of this very privileged group.
[1] www.clearancejobs.com
The Rand institute, a historically very pro-immigration organization, published a paper concluding that the aversion to STEM phds among people with choice is rational and market driven.
I’m all for immigration, but I Am deeply against allowing corporations to coerce immigrants into a narrow set of career choices as a condition of living and working in the US.
This is all based on industry claims of a shortage, when all evidence points to long completion times, high attrition rates, poor pay, and dim career prospects as driving the low interest in these degrees.