Reply #91: Financial compensation is the carrot on the stick that drives [View All]

human progress. On this Labor Day Weekend, it's probably important to note that people deserve to be compensated for their labor, and that it's an insult to not compensate people fairly for the true value of their labor, and that it society would suffer if you told people that they could only get X dollars, no matter how hard they worked.

The only reasonable limitation on wages is no limitation on the rewards people can expect from their efforts. Nobody in their right mind would embark on any complicated, difficult, or risk endeavor if they weren't compensated for those risks.

Perhaps what you worry about is that certain worthless activities (many in the realm of finance) seem to be valued more than other important things (like labor, inventiveness, and risks with very high social rewards). The solution to that problem has more to do with the kind of laws are politicians pass which create artificial rewards for worthless behavior.

Take taxation, for example. It's ridiculous that a billionaires dividends are taxed at a lower rate than a nurse or police officers labor.

Take Enron. It's ridiculous tha the government legislated a system by which energy companies could rip off consumers and state governments through monopoloy pricing of a vital commodity (in the guise of market pricing).