Make your own using our Graph Builder or upload your own files, images or videos. All our charts are user-submitted.
« Previous A Fortuitous Meeting | A Problem Next »
Make your own using our Graph Builder or upload your own files, images or videos. All our charts are user-submitted.
« Previous A Fortuitous Meeting | A Problem Next »
FIRST!
so true too
Amen.
No! No amenning to the sad state of affairs we have here! D:
Booooooo. Maybe I’m not getting, though. People with no income are the greatest contributors to humanity? What, charity? This makes no sense.
Compare the relative salaries and worth to society of nurses, firefighters, soldiers, hell, even barmen versus politicians, CEOs, rappers and Paris Hilton.
I think the key word here is ‘virtue’. In the business world it seems the more you get paid the more you are willing to check you ethics at the door on your way into the office…no? I studied business ethics in University and came out feeling I could change the world for the better if I only stuck to my guns and ‘did the right thing’ Well reality slapped me in the face (a few times) before I reluctantly started marching with the masses. You’d think the more you make the more you’d share lol who am I joking. Maybe we hoard our belonging to fill the emptiness we feel inside. How do we convince others that it is not our belongings or the amount of money we made that we will be remembered for when we die.
To address Joolz… Jobs that are “significant” tend to pay considerably less then jobs most people would think society could do without.
A great example is the medical field (besides doctors). My years working as an EMT-P on an ambulance I never saw my wages rise over “12.50 an hour”… (to kids thinking that’s a lot, it really isn’t when you’re trying to LIVE off it in Chicago) My partner’s fiance on the ambulance was making twice that as a GARBAGE man. So society is sending the message that picking you garbage up is more important then saving your life…
Another great example is teachers, where only the luckiest and best paid can even get into the 75k~100k per year range and that’s after 20 or 30 years.
Then look at people like my brother who is basically an insurance middle man. He was making over $100k per year only 5 years out of college and it’s only gone up from there.
I don’t know, let that garbage pile up after awhile…
Other then that you’re spot on. The other untold truth about teachers is that you automatically go up in pay if you get a Master’s degree. However, if you go straight into Grad school after undergrad and get your Master’s degree first there isn’t a school around that will touch you because they have to pay you more money. So…. you’re more qualified but can’t get a job. Go fig.
True dat!
Well, look at the converse, Joolz: Are the millionaires/billionaires generally making a huge contribution to humanity – unless it’s a tax write-off? No.
His point is that jobs with huge incomes (investment bankers, etc) are likely to leave the jobholder unfulfilled and don’t contribute anything to humanity but the hoarding of wealth. Whereas a doctor volunteering with Doctors Without Borders is getting paid nothing but is improving the quality of life for hundreds of people.
I sense wealth envy.
Wow, ain’t this one the truth?
Joolz – the graph says it best: As salary increases, beneficial contribution to humanity wanes, until you have more money than God, without any of that pesky conscience to interfere with using it.
Put another way, the lower-middle-class and poor work harder for less money, building/cleaning/manufacturing the things that the CEOs get paid fortunes for happening to be in that office at the time. There are exceptions, (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation comes readily to mind), but by and large, the above graph is as accurate as exaggeration for comedic value can be.
huh? this is re-turd-ed. you’re telling me doctors with their semi-high pay don’t help society? Or how about Bill Gates who is one of the greatest philanthropists of history? the only place this chart is true is for sports and movie/music celebrities.
Being a philanthropist isn’t Bill Gates’ JOB, it is something he has done with the money he made in his JOB. The graph wasn’t talking about individual people but jobs and what they pay vs. their worth to society.
some specialties of doctors are well-compensated, yes. but i’m going to have to disagree on the overall assertion that doctors are well-paid. with all they have to go through in order to do their jobs well, they do deserve to be paid more than some slick-talker with an MBA. that is, IF the doctor is doing a good job, which is hard to find these days. and even within the field of, say, general practitioners… the ones who care and spend time to help you are making less money. the ones who are “turning over” 60 patients a day and handing out a script after NOT examining you and NOT paying attention to your complaints for 10 minutes… those are making more money. i see the same thing in my job as a veterinarian. (and excuse me if i choke at hearing of a teacher making $75-100K… but then yes i obviously didn’t get into this business for the money, but enough already of the “poor teacher” rants!) and now with the gov’t trying to pay dr’s less to see medicaid patients… why do you think it’s hard to find a good doctor? why is it so much easier these days to get into medical or vet school? the white male who comes from an upper middle class family knows that’s not an easy route to wealth, and it certainly doesn’t hold the esteem that it used to. law school is so much easier and a better investment, and your lifestyle is so much easier. or better yet, get an MBA (or not) — business is the way to go, with or without a degree these days. and we wonder why we can’t get good medical care. because we’re throwing all our money at hollywood, athletes, and some chick who invented the topsy-tail, instead of understanding the value of some of these services these people are providing. everyone’s looking for their get-rich-quick scheme so they can retire and enjoy the good life. these are rarely people who are looking for ways to improve the world we live in.
and that pay for EMT’s just makes me sick for this country. i bet when we’re sitting in our crashed-up car unable to breathe b/c our lung is collapsed, we’re going to think that EMT is worth slightly more than $12.50 an hour.
don’t confuse this graph by saying fast food workers are contributing greatly to humanity. but apply it to actual careers and in more instances than not, it is the sad truth. end of rant, though i didn’t even get started.
This one is really lame.
The implication is certainly that those with no income havbe the most ‘virtue’. Hmmm, who pays the welfare checks for all those virtuous people?
If they made more in their jobs they wouldn’t need welfare checks, now would they…
“The implication is certainly that those with no income havbe the most ‘virtue’.”
Well no, because the graph line doesn’t start at zero, does it.
there is, in fact, a ceiling on anyone with integrity. you can only go so high before you have to lie. hey, that rhymes.
Teachers are a wonderful example here. As are celebrities.
:’( So true.
After two years working ridiculous hours for minimum wage and with no health insurance at a nonprofit that does great things, I had to sell out. This is soooo true.
The only virtue is happiness, all else is instrumental. People are willing to pay for products if and only if there is no alternative use of the money required to pay for the product. As long as we are free to create new products, as we are in the western world, products are priced according to their costs, including labour.
The willingness of companies to pay for labour depends on how the people that are paid contribute to the quality of the end-product. Otherwise, companied would be better of hiring cheaper labour. A aspect of quality are company ethics: If I are willing to pay a premium for “fair trade” coffee, a company is willing to conform to the norms of fair trade. In short: It’s the customers who determine the ethics of a company, nothing else. (This of course is only true of companies, with governmental services it is different, there the ethics of those in power weigh heavier because they go unchecked).
Getting back to the graph, if morals are negatively valued, clearly those morals have no value in society, as the market process will value all according to their contribution to the happiness of society. And happiness is all that matters (See Kaplow and Shavell, Fairness vs. Welfare, 2002 for the latter).
that is such a shallow and simplistic point. “the market process will value all according to their contribution to the happiness of society”? sorry, but it’s just not that simple. firstly, most of society is too stupid to understand the relevance of these contributions, because they’re either so used to getting it for cheap or free, or b/c they’re just shallow and materialistic and were never taught better. people have no problem paying $10 to go see a movie, regardless of the fact that it’s contributing to a LOT of people being overpaid. is that 2 hours of their life really comparable to the benefit they will get from their medication that they had to pay $10 for? and yet, people hate to pay for the drugs, assuming that health is something they should get for free, regardless of all the lifetimes of work put into making them healthy. but, hey, a movie… that’s fun… that’s worth $10. society in general is too stupid to make sense of the value of many things. then there is also the subject of mass communication or mass distribution. since many professionals are working on ONE person at a time, the stupid society is not going to understand that they’re not sharing this person’s pay with millions of other people. (i.e., if your doctor makes $200 an hour, then you have to pay $200 to see him for an hour – plus all the fees to run the clinic and pay staff – ; if brad pitt makes $2,000 an hour, you only have to pay $5 to see him for an hour – plus all the other people that work on the film, etc – because you’re sharing that movie experience with possibly hundreds of thousands of other people.
(i’m only making this elementary b/c i just had this conversation with someone who didn’t understand the concept).
so, if i’m a doctor, i can make more money by writing a book or manufacturing my own “supplement” to sell, or even going on the local news and talking about the medical news topic of the day… rather than spending time with individual patients and really delving into their problems and making them well.
So true. Don’t forget the arts. And any environmental or social justice organization.
So hobos must be the pillars of society!
So just for grins, check out how this billionaire exec (one of USA’s top 200 richest) used his monies. Sort of fits that right side of the graph really well:
<a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/technology/06broadcom.html
Clearly the chart was created by someone who never figured out how to make money and is acting out (in a ridiculous, juvenile way) against the grown-up versions of the kids who picked on hir in high school.
Pfui.
Or not. Maybe that someone has noticed the ridiculously high salaries of pro athletes and ethics-deprived business leaders as compared to the salaries of teachers, social workers, etc. But hey, go you for invoking Snacky’s Law.
clearly john makes a lot of money in a field that serves no one but his bank account. the point is that not everyone chooses their field as they’re trying to “figure out a way to make money.” if we did, we’d all be middle-man salespeople, lawyers, or trying to get lucky with that perfect invention or audition.
I highly disagree, i work at McDonalds, I couldn’t legally make less money than I currently do, and I highly doubt that I am making any positive contributions to humanity
Oh but you are! you’re helping people get fat who will then get gym memberships that they will never use basically giving them free money, then they will have to go to their doctors for diabetes medication and joint relief treatments also supporting that industry and they will have to keep buying larger sized clothes. Fat people fuel the economy. So pat yourself on the back, everyday hero!!
And pat yourself on the back, Ray, for making sweeping judgments and self-righteous generalizations about people you don’t even know based on their size! Because the human body is, after all, a precise machine, and every single body works exactly the same way. No genetic, environmental, or social factors could ever affect how someone’s metabolism works. No sirree.
You’re right, Sorcha, I’m a bad person. Oh goodie! Per this graph, that means I must be rich!! Seriously, I weigh a proud 216 lbs. A sense of humor – get one. I think they’re on sale at Best Buy.
Advertising. Lots of money, evil evil occupation.
How much did Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa made in their entire lifetimes? Compare that to a single episode of “Cribs” on MTV. Luckily there are some people out there that donate money to charity, like Bill Gates.
Oh yeah…
I’m a tutor and a personal care assistant (help people with disabilities take care of themselves). $10.84 an hour!
Best graph ever. Look at Engineers. Without us, nothing would get built, there would be no progress and I get 12 an hour, roughly 25,000 BEFORE taxes. A pornstar could probably get that in a month, or a good one in a day.
Mostly true. Except for Doctors, they get paid and have a large impact on humanity.