Obamas most despicable act to date.

[HappySqurriel]

ManusJustus said:

Healtchare is part of a much bigger problem in America. Americans want to make a lot of money and buy a lot of things with it. Doctors make several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (compare that to what they make in France, Britian, Sweden, etc.), CEOs make tens of millions while they run their businesses into the ground, heck even some types of nurses make over a hundred thousand dollars a year.

And nobody wants to take a pay cut and stop buying a bunch of things they dont need, especially if others dont have to do the same. You cant ask a doctor and health workers to take a 50% pay cut to make healthcare more affordable while we let bank CEOs continue to make much more than they are worth.

I doubt America will be able to fix this problem anytime soon, its more of a cultural and social problem than an economic one now.

If you can find someone who is willing to do the same job and can get similar or better results than these CEOs and doctors while earning less then they shouldn’t be making as much money as they are. While you can probably list off many instances where you could find better people who are over-paid because of how poor of a job they’re doing,  for the most part the education, experience, accreditation and track-record that is expected of these high earning individuals is so difficult to obtain that it would be impossible to attract people who could do these same jobs without offering them a similar or greater salary.

Beyond this you have to consider the opportunity cost, other expenses, and lifetime earnings of these positions before you claim that they are being paid too highly. A couple of years ago, I calculated that the average doctor was in his late 30s before he pulled ahead in lifetime earnings of someone who worked at McDonalds since they graduated high-school; and would (likely) never pull ahead of someone who was able to get a (modestly) high paying job in the trades in their early 20s.