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Comment by Hermitian909 | Hacker News Reader

These issues are mostly separate.

As a society, we need doctor's to make more money than delivery drivers because we expect them to be smart, competent, diligent, and extensively trained (sometimes for >10 years). You will not get enough doctors that meet this bar if you don't heavily incentivize them to sacrifice a huge portion of their life to achieve excellence in their craft.

Home prices are high mostly because our society has promised the demographic with the highest voter turnout (old folks and property owners) that their homes will fund their 10+ year retirement - a time when discretionary spending jumps dramatically. Anything that threatens these high home prices is shut down immediately by the voting portion of the public. As a result "A good salary" can't afford rent.

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I think doctors should be paid enough so they don't need to worry about making ends meet. I don't want the guy operating me to worry where he'll sleep because the landlord kicked them out.

Same thing for delivery drivers, though. I want the delivery driver to make enough money so he'll actually drive up to my house and drop off the package, and not be distracted by money troubles while he drives past my kids biking on the street.

Every person deserves a livable wage, and there's no reason that people who start working earlier should struggle all their life to make ends meet, just so the better educated people get cheap deliveries.

Society, in the USA, is not designed around finding the best and brightest doctors. It is about finding people to pay into being a doctor. "Need to spend money to make money" as the saying goes. Odds are some of those UPS works would make great doctors. Just that they neither have the finances to peruse being a doctor nor do they known they would be good doctor. School is not focused on help us find what we are good at. Those that do are just lucky to live in an environment where you can. No different than some of those UPS works would make a great athlete, actor, or other profession. They just don't know it because lack of opportunity to learn and find out.

I like your part about home prices. There always multiple factors in play. Such as not limiting land lords buying up properties to make home owner ship a scarce resource. Or limiting construction zoning for homes. Or turning homes into Air BNBs. Or people owning more than one home. Or companies raising prices to increase profits to drive up stocks which limit affordable building materials.

Multiple factors drive up home prices. No different than multiple factors limit our selection of quality of doctors. Doctors, home sellers, and home builders benefit by limiting and creating a scarce resource.

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