Do Lawyers Work Harder Than Movers?
I’m just now getting to read Lisa Schiffren’s contribution on the Corner to the growing overclass revolt taking the American right by storm:
The doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, serious small-business owners, top salespeople, and other professionals and entrepreneurs who make this country run work considerably harder than pretty much anyone else (including most of the chattering class, and all politicians). They are not robber barons, or trust-fund babies, or plutocrats, or even celebrities. They are mostly the meritocrats who worked hard in high school and got into the better colleges and grad schools, where they studied while others partied. They pushed through grueling hours and unpleasant “up or out” policies in their twenties and thirties at top law firms, banks, hospitals, and businesses to earn salaries in the solid six figures (or low seven) today — in their peak earning years. Their work ethic is prodigious, and, as Tigerhawk points out, in their spare time they sit on the boards of most of the complex charities and arts institutions that provide aid and pay for culture in America. No group of people contribute more to their community. And now the president, who followed a path sort of like that, and who claims that his wife’s former six-figure income was a result of precisely such qualifications and efforts, is demonizing them. More problematically, he is penalizing their success and giving them very clear incentives to ratchet back on productivity.
First off, as Schiffren notes Barack and Michelle Obama are both high-achieving meritocrats in their own right. Indeed, his entire administration is staffed with such people. She should, perhaps, consider the hypothesis that nobody is being “demonized.” Rather, a judgment is being made that a return to Clinton-era income tax policies in order to finance comprehensive health care reform would serve the national interest.
But beyond that, there’s the obscene implication that if people are poor, it’s because they don’t work hard and certainly not as hard as those long-toiling business executive. As I wrote back in October 2008:
I’m a veteran of several moves of a “let’s get a bunch of friends together and all move a bunch of stuff” variety. Today, I hired a moving company. It was a good choice. It’s also the kind of thing that, on a more political note, really dramatizes how bizarre it is that people often characterize current levels of inequality in the United States as reflecting a desire to reward hard work or say that in the United States you can get ahead by working hard. I’m sure the partners at Jones Day and the wizards at Goldman Sachs work hard, but I don’t think you can seriously deny that moving furniture for a living is hard work.
Indeed, one of the main advantages that professional career offer is precisely that, money aside, they don’t involve the sort of taxing physical labor associated with many low-skill jobs. Guys who move furniture are, of course, working extremely hard. And even your basic retail employee needs to be on her feet for hours and hours at a time while “executives” comfy chairs. And, again, I don’t think the Salvadoran guys who moved my bed found themselves in that line of work because they were too busy partying in college.
116 Responses to “Do Lawyers Work Harder Than Movers?”
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March 9th, 2009 at 9:33 am
As an engineer, I’d like to see one of these six-figure positions they’re talking about.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Obviously, if a tax cut rewards those who work hard and “play by the rules”, then why aren’t Republicans suggesting tax INCREASES on the poor, as a means of punishing them for their laziness. Oh, wait, St. Ronnie DID raise taxes on the poor in the form of Social Security taxes.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
should be to kill all the lawyers!
March 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I go to a top-flight law school – one of the top 10 in the country. I know a total of 2 people here who didn’t support Barack Obama.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:36 am
There is no growing ‘overclass’ revolt. No one is ‘going Galt’. There are people calling into conservative talk radio and screaming about how they ain’t gonna take it and all.
And to the extent that there really is an overclass, it is most definitely not comprised of minor hardworking professionals and small business owners. They are still part of the tiny upper or even uppermost middle classes.
When they become centimillionaires and billionaires, especially for a few generations, then they can talk about ‘overclass’.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I think you are being dense Matt.
I’ll concede that furniture movers work harder physically than lawyers, doctors, executives, etc., but you should concede that anyone in those positions works much harder mentally. They are difficult jobs because they require brain-power, not man-power.
Leaving that issue aside, there are two other considerations you completely ignore: first, while there are variations and certainly exceptions, by and large lawyers, bankers, small business owners, etc. work much longer hours than physical laborers, who are largely on 9-5 shift work and enjoy significantly more free time. Secondly — and Schiffren brings this up, though she makes the point very poorly — for the most part these professionals have invested years of their lives in education and training for the roles they are in, something that is obviously not true for a furniture mover. All this training needs to be accounted for when considering how hard these people work.
Even leaving aside the entire supply/demand aspect of the question, as well as the value produced to society, it does not seem at all unreasonable to claim that highly-compensated professionals work harder than unskilled laborers.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:39 am
“They pushed through grueling hours and unpleasant “up or out” policies in their twenties and thirties”
Not to mention all the Chapstick they were forced to buy in order to keep their lips smooth for all of the ass-kissing they needed to engage in during those “grueling” hours.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Business executives work hard mentally? Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHAHA!
It takes about half a dozen of the usual run of suits to collectively make up a triple-digit IQ. Which is why we’re so fucked.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Yes, lawyers and bankers work harder than movers. I worked as mover during a summer in college. It’s “hard work”, in the sense that it is physically grueling. But then lots of people pay for the privilege of engaging in grueling physical exertion at a gym. In a more significant sense, being a mover is very easy work. The hours aren’t particularly long, and the task is straightforward and simple. Don’t confuse something that makes you sweat with something that’s actually a difficult task. And more importantly, in any market (and human labor is such a market), the price of something is set by the relative supply and demand. There’s a huge supply of people capable of being a mover, and quite a bit less with the intelligence and skills to be a brain surgeon, an engineer, a securities lawyer or an investment banker. So those people are paid more.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am
And you have to add in the really distinguishing feature for these people, which is a lack of any kind of historical awareness. Ironic, in that they’re the ones always talking about the history of this great Republic of ours…but their great-grandparents probably did move furniture, or did something equally rewarding. Their grandparents were carpenters or assembly-line workers or bookkeepers. Their parents were college-educated and took up work as middle managers–and the current generation likes to pretend that they would have been wealthy white-collar types in any century.
The New Deal, the G.I. Bill, universal primary education, Social Security, Medicare, the Pure Food and Drug Act–all those insidious tentacles of overweening Big Government–they had nothing to do with the immense rise in every measure of well-being in this country in the past century, both in the country at large and in the family histories of these yammering idiots. That’s the level of perception you’re dealing with here.
You’ve made it to the country club! Congratulations–but, hurry! Pull the ladder up before anyone else gets in! How special will you be if just any jerk can enjoy the good life?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I once worked for a moving company. I once worked for a law firm. On average, the lawyers worked far harder than the movers.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Yeah, those investment bankers are just as smart as brain surgeons. That’s why the financial sector has been so good for the economy!
Keep it up, folks. Pure comedy gold.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:46 am
“it does not seem at all unreasonable to claim that highly-compensated professionals work harder than unskilled laborers.”
You have obviously never worked at the equivalent of a large law firm. The idea that these people are cranking out novel legal solutions to intractable problems is a myth. Most of their time is spent talking to clients and other lawyers, and in re-packaging memos and court filings already drafted by changing the names and dates.
I would also ask you: who do you think is more tired at the end of their day, the lawyer or the furniture mover?
I have worked as a laborer and a lawyer, and I can tell you, the most tired I ever got from working was the five or six hours I spent each day I was a substitute high school teacher.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I’ll concede that furniture movers work harder physically than lawyers, doctors, executives, etc., but you should concede that anyone in those positions works much harder mentally.
Really? I’ll concede the second you supply me with some kind of quantitative measurement of “work.”
And TH—you did a nice job addressing the readers of this blog like retarded children. What’s your point?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:47 am
There is also the simple reality that no amount of preparation, hard work, dedication, and long hours means you’re either making the right decisions or supporting sane policies politically.
I’ve known some pretty amazingly dedicated & hard working small businessmen, and if the country were run in accord with their preferences, it’d make the Bush Jr. years look like a model of propriety.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I too worked as a mover, summers in college and for a year afterwards. My experience was different from TH’s – usually either the hours are long (maybe 60 hrs a week in the peak of the summer) or you’re not getting enough hours to pay the bills (say 20 hrs per week in the winter). It was pretty rare to hit that sweet spot of 35-40 billed hours where you’re making enough money but not totally wiped out.
The most striking thing to me, though, was that guys who worked there long term seemed to stay young through, say, their mid-30s. Then, the accumulated bumps and bruises and back strains seemed to catch up all at once – more than a couple of guy who I thought were in their 50s or 60s turned out to be closer to 40 years old. Being a young, healthy guy working as a mover was a lot of fun, but I sure wouldn’t want to be a 50-year-old who had worked as a mover for 30 years.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:49 am
It would be difficult to invent better proof that Republicans and conservatives are elitists.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:50 am
If these jokers are “going Galt,” could they please just get on with it? I realize that part of the process is destroying everything you’ve built first, so the parasites can’t have it, and that might take Doctor Helen the better part of an afternoon…but can’t she clear her schedule? The rest of us would like to get on with trying to fix the mess they’ve made.
Also, if Jesus could get on down here and rapture some of these jerks, we’d really appreciate it.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:51 am
The funny part about this is the “punishing their success” line, which could be used no matter the situation. If they paid a 1% tax rate and someone wanted to bump it to 2%, it’d be punishing their success. It’s the same tax cuts as the solution to every problem no matter what philosophy that should be laughed out of any forum it appears in.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:51 am
My wife’s stepdad is a lineman for a large energy company. There is no lawyer in the universe who works harder than him. This winter, he was doing 10 hour days, six days a week, staying away from home five nights a week, and working outside all day in sub-zero temperatures. If there’s a blow-out, they can get called at any time; if there’s an ice storm or high winds, they are pretty much guaranteed to be working 15-17 hours straight for several days (depending on the extent of the damage; they have to cover all of Eastern Iowa). I know how often lawyers get distracted from their work by Bubble Bobble, so don’t give me that shit about them working non-stop. They work hard, but as Matt says, so do other people. As for training, I guess an apprenticeship doesn’t count as “years of training”? Ugh, I hate the self-righteousness of the professional class so much.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:52 am
$9 Trillion of our $11.3 Trillion in debt was approved over the personal signatures of the last three Republican Presidents.
The economy is collapsing because of games played by these alleged meritocrats and allowed by their Republican Congresses and their Republican President.
I’m sure that such critics of “Tax and Spend Democrats” would never be “Borrow and Spend Republicans”. So they can damm well pay off the debt incurred by THEIR FUCKING POLITICAL LEADERS. The ones they elected and supported.
And if they can’t see their way to meeting their obligations, I’m sure that there are some low-paid IRS agents and prison guards that can help them.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:53 am
james gary, i think th’s point is that if professionals create guild restrictions that affect supply and demand, they can game their wages better than people who are unable to create guild restrictions, but i could be wrong.
i’m also struck by the notion that all across this great land of ours, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. are sitting on charitable boards, all couple million of them. what unadulterated crap.
but not nearly as unadulterated crap as is the notion that retaining $610 rather than $650 of the next $1000 the doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. earn above $250K is somehow demonizing them. the insanity is unbelievable.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:55 am
In place of movers, I would suggest childcare workers or nurses.
It’s taxing psychological as well as physical labor, often requires extra schooling and demands killer hours.
Hard to argue that the your average mid-level executive works harder or performs more socially beneficial work than your average childcare worker or nurse.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:55 am
And more importantly, in any market (and human labor is such a market), the price of something is set by the relative supply and demand. There’s a huge supply of people capable of being a mover, and quite a bit less with the intelligence and skills to be a brain surgeon, an engineer, a securities lawyer or an investment banker.
In other words, their higher pay is NOT a consequence of it generating more real-world value, but merely of the shortage of people able to conduct it. If the numbers were reversed, and we were flooded with people who could be lawyers and investment bankers, but only a tiny few who could move furniture, the furniture movers would be making six figures, and the lawyers would be eating ramen, even if the value of their work remained the same.
OK. Good point.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Oh, and of course in Rand’s world everyone who was admirable were the people who *made things*. She spends page after page after page with glowing accolades for Roark’s time as a construction worker, and it seems like every positive character in Atlas Shrugged is a former laborer turned construction-related business owner. Pretty sure none of *them* went to grad school.
I wonder what she’d think about hedge fund managers and banking CEOs.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:56 am
I think it might take maybe two or three weeks to train MY as a competent mover. It would take significantly longer to train him to be a competent lawyer, doctor or engineer. This seems kind of obvious.
I teach at a university during the fall and spring. During the summer, I work as a landscaper. I make $10 an hour. I could probably make more money delivering babies or doing someone’s accounting or designing software. But I don’t do those things. Not because I am “lazy.” Landscaping is a real ballbuster. But it is also true that learning to do that other stuff would be WAY too much work. And WAY too hard.
I had a chance to learn a lot of that stuff. I went to college. I could have taken a lot of computer science classes. I could have become fluent in Spanish or Chinese and made a lot of money as a translator. But instead, I did other stuff. So… if I had worked harder, I would be in a position to make more money.
And if the guys I went to high school with had invested a ton of money in education rather than big trucks and Ford Mustangs and trips to Cancun and Jet Skis… they would have more marketable skills at the moment.
That’s a really broad generalization. A ton of people never had the opportunity to go to college at all. But I think the point the NRO woman is making here is not quite as controversial as MY is making it out to be.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:56 am
oh boo hoo. i guess the “overclass” will just have to sulk because everyone is being so harsh on them. One would think that such intelligent people could handle a little demonization.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Salespeople? Really?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Ever since the 80s high income workers like lawyers have been putting in substantially more hours than low income workers. But what’s your point on physical labour? Most lawyers would see physical labour (i.e. exercise) as a bonus and given the amount of time they spend in the gym they probably are not trying to avoid physically challenging jobs. But this still ignores all the non-physical stress lawyers and other professionals must endure.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:59 am
A lot of you taking issue with MattY’s post are getting awfully defensive about what is, essentially, a truism. But what MattY is really getting at is both a cluelessness and a lack of respect for “hard work” among the self-important conservatives. The funny thing is that the children of many of these movers and laborers are being encouraged by their parents to become lawyers and doctors because those jobs don’t ruin your body.
Yes, I make plenty of money. Yes, it’s stressful. Yes I lost a lot of my youth dedicating myself to preparation for the job I have now. Yes, a job that paid $50k/yr was a heck of a lot stressful than the one that pays $100k/yr. Instead of being resentful that the public isn’t kissing my ass, I’m thankful I make good money, am not in constant fear of getting laid off, and will be able to physically continue work in my field indefinitely. And I find myself not being demonized, in part because I don’t get all huffy and defensive at the prospect of recognizing that others work hard for less compensation and fewer future opportunities.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:59 am
As a lawyer, I would never trade places with a mover even if the pay was the same. Lawyers do work more hours than a mover but then the mover will be applying for Workers Compensation if he put in 60 hours plus a week.
The precise reason why the lawyers work more hours than a mover is because we sit on our desk all day and can manage to put in 60 plus hours week after week.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Howard’s point is especially well-taken. Most of what lawyers do is create dead-weight losses through the power of their guild–forcing what should be simple and routine matters through endless labyrinths of briefs and motions and counter-motions. It is perverse, and has nothing to do with either justice or equity, that the wealthier party in a legal action can “lawyer to death” the poorer party, without regard to the merits of the case. But that is the world that lawyers have built for us. And we’re supposed to be greatful to those parasites?
March 9th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I would also ask you: who do you think is more tired at the end of their day, the lawyer or the furniture mover?
The lawyer is more mentally tired, the furniture mover is more physically tired. I don’t know how you can compare the two things.
I have worked as a laborer and a lawyer, and I can tell you, the most tired I ever got from working was the five or six hours I spent each day I was a substitute high school teacher.
Sure, no argument here. Did being a substitute teacher involve lifting heavy furniture?
March 9th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I’d like to see some of these lawyers and financial whiz-kids spending the summer cutting sugarcane, Cuba-style. Wonder how long they would last.
“Working harder”, my @$$.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
If there’s a more socially parasitic and useless sector of our economy than the lawyers, I’d like to know what it is. “Working harder”, indeed.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I go to a top-flight law school – one of the top 10 in the country. I know a total of 2 people here who didn’t support Barack Obama…
There is no growing ‘overclass’ revolt. No one is ‘going Galt’. There are people calling into conservative talk radio and screaming about how they ain’t gonna take it and all.
This point can’t be made enough: this yammering we’re hearing is NOT a broad social movement by the upper-middle-class and entrepreneurs in this country. They supported Barack Obama by a good margin in the election, and he wasn’t the slightest bit shy about his tax plans.
This is a political line ginned up by the right-wing media.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I worked as a mover for a while in Chicago. I worked 15-18 hours a day. Don’t tell me that most white collar professionals work harder than that, even if they are using their minds. Why work with your mind is considered working harder than working with your body is beyond me. BTW, it is not unusual for working class people to work multiple jobs. Fact is there are hard-working and lazy people up and down the income ladder. I don’t notice any strong correlation between hard work and income.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I’d like to see some of these lawyers and financial whiz-kids spending the summer cutting sugarcane, Cuba-style.
You can’t do it, my friends.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:04 am
When the mover bills 100 hours in a week (which means I was in the office for probably 120), and loses a vacation he’s been planning for months because his client needs something NOW, then you can fucking bitch to me about how hard they work.
Give me an F’ing break…
March 9th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Ike,
You can quit and become a mover any time you want.
What’s that? Hello?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:06 am
A person who moves things with a crane is more highly compensated than a person who moves things with their back. The reason is that you can move more with a crane, which makes you more productive but gives you greater potential for making, or preventing, damage: the crane operator has more responsibility.
Non-entrepreneurial professional classes are also generally compensated on the basis of responsibility. In the “up-or-out” workplaces Lisa mentions, the level of responsibility keeps ratcheting up as you move up the ladder, but the idea is to always be filling your ranks with people who have the potential to take on greater responsibility. But in my experience these places actually promote those who are most willing to do as they are told — a trait that is absolutely useless when you reach the top of the pyramid.
Of course the down side of responsibility is that you are responsible for the harm you cause. Unless the government bails you out.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
“I have worked as a laborer and a lawyer, and I can tell you, the most tired I ever got from working was the five or six hours I spent each day I was a substitute high school teacher.”
Word. I once had to spend 40 minutes in front of a class of 6-graders. I was exhausted after it.
On another note, where are these engineers making the low seven figures? Who do I have to blow to get a position like that?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
When the mover bills 100 hours in a week (which means I was in the office for probably 120), and loses a vacation he’s been planning for months because his client needs something NOW
Your suffering ennobles you, my friend. I shed tears on your behalf.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Shorter National Review:
Barack Obama is more valuable to our society than 20 Joe the Plumbers.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Having grown up on a family farm, I know that neither the movers or the lawyers know about hard work. As a reformed journalist, I also know that neither has any lock on hard mental work.
And as a mother, I’d really like to point out how silly the whole conversation is. The world need both lawyers and movers; and there are some folks who would make better lawyers, some better movers. The idea that one group is more deserving, however, is noxious.
The mover has just as much hope of sending his children to college as the lawyer; just as much need of a winter vacation in a warm place, and the lawyer has just as much need for a beer after work. They both need food and love and time to care for their families.
But the one thing I’m sure of is that the 3% of folks who are getting their tax rate returned to Clinton-ear levels (as the Bush admin. set it up,) would like the rest of us to get pissed about it on the hope that we’ll one day be in that rate. And none of us has a chance of getting there if the economy fails, which it will if we don’t invest in our nation.
That means investing in both the lawyers and the movers and the infrastructure the need to live.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Gotta define work somewhere, folks. How about expenditure of energy? How about the percentage of one’s potential that is met? Where do we consider the circumstances and the environment of the worker? Or pay per unit of work? A brilliant banker can coast along without putting forth a lot of effort, making millions within a few years of graduation from Wharton. A laborer who doesn’t have the same brainpower (or the benefits of nepotism, nationality, “connections,” etc.) may be putting far more of his potential to work. Having a high IQ doesn’t mean you are, or ever were, “working hard,” and being uneducated or dumb doesn’t mean you aren’t working your ass off.
The Filipino guys (some of whom had Master’s degrees back home) who logged 25 18-hour days in a row in the middle of the Pacific, earning a measly $500 a month plus $10 per ton of fish caught, were certainly working harder than anyone I’ve ever encountered.
Meanwhile, most of us here are probably blowing off work at our white collar jobs so we can comment on someone’s blog until lunchtime. Yeah, that’s tough work.
By the way, not all brain surgeons are smart. Google “Michael Egnor” and “Intelligent Design” and you’ll see what I mean.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Yeah, all of us white collars are workin’ real hard, reading blogs at this hour of the day…
March 9th, 2009 at 11:15 am
The Capitalist system is not designed to reward “hard work” per se, but rather work that is most highly valued, the value being derived from several factors. So the article Yglesias is criticizing is obviously wrong.
That being said, as an attorney I would agree that an hour of my work is probably on the whole less hard than an hour of work by a mover, but I would say that getting to my position requires more sacrifice in life than mover’s have to make. Life to me feels like a rat race, where I can’t stop or else I fall back five steps. Time commitments are generally more difficult to manage and far less predictable, and what is more valuable than time after all. I imagine people can go in and out of the moving industry without skipping a beat.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Engineers and scientists have to be really talented to make alot more than the magic $100K a year mark. For the most part, most engineers and scientists spend their time making a lot less than what the typical doctor or dentist makes.
Considering this is the National Review, it is to be taken with not a grain, but a spoonfull of salt.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Gosh, Ike, sorry you lost that vacation. At my company, I would’ve been able to reschedule it. I’m also sorry that, like most lawyers, you are too shy to bill your clients for an adequate number of hours in order to leave you adequately compensated for your work.
If you’re ever in town, I’ll buy you a beer. I mean, I won’t sit with your while you drink it, but you deserve _something_ for your pain.
You billing your time right now?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:21 am
By the way, thinking and brainpower are material, despite what Egnor the brain surgeon would say. Why is having a “tired brain” more noble or meaningful than having tired arms, back, legs, etc? It’s all material and all about effort. Brainpower may be more advantageous to the thinker and perhaps more valuable to capitalism and society, but putting it to use does not mean that its use is more draining or difficult than the use of other organs. Some of us are talking about the value of big brains instead of the subject of MY’s post, which is work.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Joe in Lowell,
No kidding.
Consumatopia,
Good point. I was planning on giving up on Yglesias’ blog for Lent, but I couldn’t do it. I think I will give it up for the “Little Lent” of Advent; modern society has largely dropped the medieval custom of fasting during Advent as well as Lent, which I think is a mistake.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:22 am
“The hours aren’t particularly long, and the task is straightforward and simple.”
My paternal grandfather was immigrated from Galicia in the 20s, where he was, basically, a peasant. In his wandering from country to country, trying to get to the US with basically no money, he picked up German, Polish, Romanian, and Russian, in addition to his native Yiddish. He got to the US in his late 20s, and learned English with only a slight accent. I think that means he was a pretty smart guy, though when he got to the US he could only find work as a longshoreman. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm his intelligence because the “straightforward and simple tasks” that went into his intensely physical labor broke his health, and he died at age 53, years before I was born.
So screw you. The worst ailments that your desk job will give you are type 2 diabetes and the piles.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Just because Shiffren is a lunatic doesn’t mean that successful lawyers, doctors (especially residents and interns) and I-bankers, etc., don’t work quite hard and for longer hours on average than physical laborers. Obviously, people’s income isn’t based on how much they deserve in any abstract moral sense. Neither should their tax bill. To quote William Munny, deserves got nothing to do with it. If it did, nurses in pediatric oncology wards and aids in homes for adults with special needs would be be millionaires. But we live in a market economy that, for all its obvious upsides in generating economic growth and shared prosperity, has its downsides in terms of social justice. Seems reasonable to have government step in to ameliorate the worst of those downsides with economic winners picking up a larger share of the tab. You can support a modest increase in the highest marginal income tax rate for the highest 2% in income (and I do!) without resorting to Steve Labonne-style mindless bolshevism, which only lends support to Shiffren-style idiocy about “demonization” of successful people.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:23 am
If you look at a list of occupations from the bureau of labor statistics you’ll find no doctors, lawyers, or engineers, that I can find, making more on average than $250,000. That’s a lot of meritocrats. Can someone please write a book called Paris Hilton Shrugged
March 9th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Note to Ike:
use the little calculator widget thingy on your computer before you make absurd claims about how much you work in a week. Also, talk to some lawyers before you start telling us how you don’t bill as many hrs as you work, so we don’t laugh so hard. Also, get back to work and stop reading blogs!
March 9th, 2009 at 11:35 am
To quote William Munny, deserves got nothing to do with it.
OT: my all-time favorite line from any movie, ever, and criminally under-quoted in popular culture.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Matt:
Do not take the bait laid out here. According to Payscale.com, the average salaries for the professionals listed here are:
Doctor (in this case an internist): $140,000
Attorney (with 10 years exp): $102,915
Engineer (Civil, 10 yrs. exp): $75,542
Executive (MBA, Marketing Director): $114,873
Executive (MBA, Financial Controller): $81,886
Small Business Owner: $233,600
Salesperson (Territorial Sales Rep.): $44,630
Of the folks listed, the only ones effected by Obama letting the Bush tax cuts expire are roughly half the small business owners.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:44 am
As I have progressed through life, my various jobs have involved progressively less hard work and progressively more pay. So, I have no idea what the right-wingers are talking about. The harder you work in this country, the less you earn.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Wealth and poverty are relative, not absolute. This is why a rising tide doesn’t lift all boats, and why a tax increase doesn’t dis-incentivize anyone.
You work harder to make more, not hard to make a lot. Shifting the frame of reference doesn’t change the motivation.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Engineers probably work harder than top lawyers, and in undergrad years most pre-law and business school kids were out partying a lot more than their engineering or science brethren.
Lawyers, bankers, and business folks control the flow of capital, so they make sure a sizable portion of that capital flow goes right into their wallets. In the end the lawyers do not create, they litigate.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I think the real distinction here should be between artists and rodeo clowns. No one, and I mean no one, works harder per minute of work than a rodeo clown (except maybe the actual rodeo cowboy, or possibly the bull). I tried doing some rodeo clowning in my backyard once, and after five minutes, I’ve never been so exhausted in my life.
Artists, however, have it pretty cushy, what sitting around sipping their lattes or laying out on their bean bags and everything. But let’s not forget, the artist is ALWAYS working, every breathing moment is, in some way, dedicated to art. I’ve never done it myself, but I’ve seen a lot of movies, and it all looks pretty hard to me.
So, in conclusion, the stimulus is probably okay since it funds some art stuff (I think), but not rodeo clowns, who are probably evil anyway.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Joe from Lowell: that’s pretty funny!
March 9th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle, I’ve never seen a more self-parodic bunch of pathetic poor little rich kids than the whiny-ass lawyers and finance guys showing up on this thread to stamp their feet and insist that they are too the bestest, hardest-working people around.
Yes, the average corporate executive or partner at a law firm works far longer hours with far more mental and psychological stress than, say, a roofer. And their jobs require far more years of expensive education. And therefore, the market has always rewarded his type of work with a much higher salary. And justifiably so.
In the past 25 years or so–largely as a result of deliberate public policy–the wage ratio between the laborer and the executive has ballooned and, at the same time, the relative burden of taxation has shifted away from the executive class. We were told this was necessary and essential to economic growth, because the executive class is so wonderfully productive. And the end result of giving all this money and political clout to these classes has been financial ruin and the biggest economic disaster since the last time the executive classes had so much money and political clout.
And so now a rather modest effort to change the balance between rewarding enterprise and physical toil back to the levels during a period of broadly-shared prosperity is deemed to be “attacking” and “demonizing” the rich. What a bunch of spoiled, simpering ninnies.
Excuse me while I sharpen my pitchfork.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:54 am
It’s amazing how much skill is required to do “unskilled labor” well and correctly. Yeah, you could train MY to be an adequate mover in a couple of weeks, but not to be a really good one. There are tricks to packing boxes and packing a truck that take years to learn. The same goes for digging ditches, limbing trees, hauling garbage, etc.
And that’s not even going into the point so many others have brought up: that these people’s bodies are literally worn out by the work they do, leaving them without the means to support their families, generally well before retirement age.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
We’re at the point where the lies the elite tell themselves to justify their extravagant lifestyles no longer bear any resemblence to reality.
These people didn’t work hard in highschool, they came from wealthy families who were privileged into the positions they have now. The guys who did work hard, well, they mostly got shafted into mid-level IT jobs working for these scumbags who stood on their mommies’ and daddies’ shoulders. Some of them couldn’t even afford college, and hoping to be good enough for a scholarship isn’t realistic these days. Those same over-privileged fucks have decided that if you don’t take 5 extra-curricular activities, you shouldn’t get accepted in any good school. That’s a real hard bar for anyone busting their ass studying to clear. you know who can clear it? Princess Muffy and her boyfriend biff, who get their grades massaged at prestigious boarding schools.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Stealing is hard work.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
It’s very bizarre to see “conservatives” defending meritocracy. Traditionally conservatives have seen meritocracy as corrosive of community and family values, it erodes tradition and creates a pseudo-aristocracy that is in many ways worse than a real aristocracy. A real aristocracy is supposed to recognize that they hold their positions through the grace of God, and so feel an obligation to show some humility and some noblesse oblige towards the lower classes. A meritocratic leadership class is told from day one that they are simply better than everyone else and behaves accordingly. Traditional conservatives romanticize aristocrats, certainly, but they aren’t wrong about the awful hubris and arrogance of the meritocrats.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
@DTM
I agree with you that the argument about whether or not taxes are actually “punitive” is more effective for the argument at hand. Nevertheless, I think the skill and work-level argument is also important, mostly because there are so many blatant public misperceptions about what constitutes skill and what constitutes hard work. If you haven’t read it, Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital is a classical examination of skill and labor.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I am a lawyer. My work, while not physically taxing in any way, is very stressful. When I go home at the end of a day’s work, I am not physically tired, but I am mentally worn out, and often cannot relax or sleep well because aspects of my work are still pinging around inside my head.
I used to work as a roofer (in Texas, during summer). While that work was physically brutal, at the end of the workday (and on weekends, holidays, etc) it was OVER. Since I became a “professional” I’ve often had times where I wished I could go back to doing physical labor instead of brain work.
The obvious reason I wouldn’t is that my current job pays me far more. But if the question is “which is harder work?”, I think the answer is far from obvious.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
These people didn’t work hard in highschool, they came from wealthy families who were privileged into the positions they have now.
I disagree. Those days are long gone. In my experience the leading lawyers, private equity guys and hedge fund managers really are people who worked their asses off, got 1500s or better on their SATs, and did not have fantastic social lives. The current generation of power people includes lots of Jewish, Irish and Italians from middle class families who worked very hard to get where they are now. That’s the problem. Arguably we were all better off when Wall Street was dominated by self-satsfied WASPs who were happy to knock off at 3 pm to play a round of golf rather than burn the candle to 1 am trying to find that angle to guarantee an additional 5% return.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Doctors, lawyers, and engineers all have unions. Movers don’t.
Did I say unions? I meant professional organizations…sorry. Totally different things. It’s not like a professional organization would shelter incompetent members from punishment against the larger public interest. Just ask the AMA.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I wanted to second soullite’s point. This whole “meritocrat” business, while not entirely specious, is highly tinged with rationalization. Many folks end up in privileged positions as a result of growing up in an environment of privilege. To gloss over this reality with some “we all got here by dint of hard work and concerted bootstrap-pulling” bullshit is to be either delusional or disingenuous. Merit has value, no question about it. So does money, opportunity and connections. What fraction of the so-called overclass is the result of the former vs the latter, I couldn’t say, but I feel pretty confident it’s at best half.
I see it with my own kids. I can (barely) afford to send them to private school, and pay for a variety enriching activities on the side. I do it because I love them and want what’s best for them. But I’m under absolutely no illusions that they’re not being provided with advantages that many kids don’t have access to. To be brutally honest, that’s part of the point. I want them to be as well positioned to have a happy life as I can manage, and getting into a good college is a big part of that.
Now, I don’t make enough for Obama’s tax cuts to affect me. But if I did, I like to think I could handle a little more equity being restored to our overall socio-economic fabric at my expense. To do otherwise would be to willfully ignore the role that some economic advantages played in my getting where I am today.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Many of the right-wingers here claim that lawyers are more educated and “work harder”. Do they know what work is? I guess they either didn’t take physics or were dreaming of 7-figure salaries during physics class.
And don’t say its “mental work”. Neuroscience hasn’t discovered that yet.
And “stress”. Stress is self-generated. Define “stress” (which can be done, but lets’ see them do it) and tell me why its unavoidable.
Finally, the long-hours are because of guild mentality. Its not as if work couldn’t efficiently be spread over more individuals. But the lawyering class doesn’t want it that way.
Lots of BS.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Perhaps we can find a better way to properly tax productive asshats like Lisa.
What should “we the people” charge lawyers to use the parts of our court system most of us don’t ever access? It couldn’t be cheap to create and enforce Bill Gates’ copyrights on programs that furniture movers don’t use. How much should we charge engineers to buy into projects like the space shuttle? And how much extra should Lisa and her studious pals pay for the less industrious among us who get themselves killed in an unproductive war? These people make me puke.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
The difference between these two occupations is obviously the ability to delay gratification while jumping through years of required hoops. My two stints in blue-collar jobs introduced me to many hard-working people, some smart. Most couldn’t muster the will to make it through more than a semester or two at community college.
What I need more convincing about is that these big law and investment banking jobs (unlike the Galt B.S., these are the only two non-M.D. fields that likely allow significant portions of their workers into the relevant tax brakcets) add that much value to the economy.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I’m a lawyer and my dad worked with sheetmetal. I used to call him on the phone and complain how tired I was. He used to moan and say, “You work inside- in air condition!”
Thanks for memories Matt!
March 9th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
As one of those that will actually be impacted by the higher marginal rate – as will most of my friends – I feel comfortable saying none of us will work less hard, give less to charity or change just about anything in our behavior. The circle I travel in at this point in life is largely populated by moderately hard-working, very well paid professionals – some of whom sit on the boards of private schools and museums. Most of us are working somewhere around 50-60ish hours per week – ususally with a lot of flexibility in the hours. Some work less. Most of us are autonomous in our work, which makes somewhat longer hours more palatable. TigerHawkMan claims he works 100 hours per week, sits on charitable foundations, and helps around the home. I doubt it in his case, and it certainly is not common with the people making big dollars as a salary man. If he is working that many hours, his boss should tell him to cut it down significantly and take a look at the quality of work done.
My bet is that none of the people making this silly noise really wants to give up the money/position “going Galt” would entail. In fact, most of them don’t really have a way to do so. So sad.
DN
March 9th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
The line that punishing those that work hard has been on me as well. Low compensation does not equal lazy is the point that, I think, Matt is trying to make. It’s not a pissing contest over who works harder, it’s please try to recognize that just because a job is not a highly compensated one, does not mean that people are not busting their humps.
I for one think that we should start compensating based on what would happen if someone didn’t do their job for a month. Suddenly CEOs would make a lot less then garbage men…
March 9th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
“and now the president, who followed a path sort of like that”
Sort of? Which president is he talking about? Bush merits a “sort of”. I think Obama is comfortably in the category “meritocrats”, has anyone seriously argued otherwise?
March 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Jason: I think the “sort of” there is because the right wing loons need to be able to tell themselves that Obama is really just a product of affirmative action in order to overcome the massive cognitive dissonance that would otherwise melt their brains.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I agree that it is pointless to argue who actually works “harder”. Both because it is not really possible to assess who works “harder” and because it is hardly the government’s job to figure out who is worthy and unworthy and reward the former and punish the later. But given that, the anti-Obama argument takes the bigger hit. Conservatives are arguing that the folks making more than $250k are too worthy to be taxed. If we can’t really assess that, how do they make the argument?
But the free market argument against Obama’s policies is also problematic. First, in my opinion, because the government already seriously distorts the price of things by providing extensive services to the wealthy at absurdly low prices. How valuable is copyright protection to Disney, Microsoft television networks and the like? Do we really charge full market value for that service? I doubt it. How about the value of sharing risk with the community via incorporation or having guaranteed sole use of a frequency of the radio spectrum for broadcasting? I would argue that these are only a small portion of the services provided by the federal government for which we charge very low rates. How much then of the high income of the finance and legal folks here complaining of Obama’s tax policies in turn depends upon the government providing these services at the extremely low rates it does?
But the higher rates on the salaries of folks making over $250k can, I think, be defended even more directly. If the mover roofer had to rely solely on cash for his pay and transactions, he would still be able to do his job and earn the salary he does. But how many of the folks in law or finance depend upon the trustworthiness of many other people to handle large sums of money. A trustworthiness that can no doubt be accounted for to a great extent by peoples natural sense of morals, but which ultimately relies heavily too on the existence of the FBI, the Justice Department and the Federal Penal System, to keep everyone focused on right and wrong? Indeed, if given the choice how many of you in finance would forgo paying the taxes you do now, plus those proposed by Obama, at the mere cost of giving up any such federal protection to your assets? If no one would actually take that deal, then you are not being overcharged.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Tangentially DN brings up a good point – I would never trade my 60 hour work week with flexibility for a 40 hour week with no flexibility. I remember that hell of being on the clock, getting docked pay if you’re 5 minutes late, being forced to work an 8 hour shift on 30 minutes notice or get fired, desperately trying to find someone to trade shifts with you so you could make a doctor’s appointment, etc. Life sucks for the lower class, let’s not kid ourselves.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
All this discussion on who “deserves”their money more, and the morality of taxing the rich ignores the real reason the rich must be taxed at higher rates: That’s where the money is! The government is deep in debt and borrowing even more. Taxing the rich is the only option; there’s no other source of revenue that can possibly pay for all this spending.
It doesn’t matter if you believe the non-rich are lazy, stupid parasites (I don’t); taxing them gets you nowhere. People at “The Corner” constantly gloss over this fact. When you increase spending, you increase taxes on the rich, if not in the short term than in the long. There’s no other source of revenue!
March 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Until, as noted above, the years of doing a physically-difficult job destroys your body. The job isn’t exactly OVER at the end of the day if it means you can’t stand up straight anymore, is it.
Regarding the “long hours” – the whiny “professionals” out there are certainly aware that it’s quite common for low-paid service workers to simultaneously hold multiple part-time positions, often with substantial travel time between them, right? That’s what it takes to “get ahead”, after all – or maybe just pay for your kid’s health care.
The amount of whining from well-paid desk jockeys on this thread is fucking pathetic. And I say this as a fairly well-paid desk jockey.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I’m a partner at a big law firm, work pretty hard but not unreasonably so, and would be the first to acknowledge that lots of people paid a lot less work harder than I do — both mentally and physically. I’d like to second those who say this is a silly media story with no foundation in reality. I know dozens of lawyers — many of whom will be affected by President Obama’s plan to increase the top marginal income tax rate by ten percent or so to get back to the Clinton-era levels — and not a single one intends to cut back. It’s just silly to contend that successful people will moderate their effort in order to avoid paying 39.6% tax on incomes over $250,000. That old argument has been around since the top marginal rate was 90%. Perhaps back then it had some basis in reality. Today, it doesn’t. And, finally, in defense of my fellow attorneys, I don’t know a single one who thinks lawyers are being “demonized” by the administration. Well-paid people got an undeserved break in the Bush tax cuts, which were never affordable to begin with. Asking the relatively better off to live without an extension of a tax break the country could never afford and which they don’t need is not “demonization.” No doubt we lawyers include among our number a few who read Ayn Rand at an impressionable age, but please don’t assume that these occasional yahoos and the insane pundits at the National Review speak for us as a group. Big law firms are generally a conservative lot, but even among big birm partners everybody seems to recognize that the government needs more revenue, and it’s perfectly approppriate for the President to ask the top 2% to contribute.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
On that “they run all the charity boards!” thing: my parents, between them, work about 140 hours/week. If one of them decided to suddenly take up joining the board of a major charity, there would be an endless fight about it because there would be no time left in the day for either one of them to see each other. My point being that joining the board of a charity is not an occupation of the ultra-hardworkingg. It’s a perk of being a member of the leisure class or a perk of people who are able to make a fair amount of money, putting them in the “charity board member” social class, while not actually requiring a lot of long hours of work for them.
The last charity/community board meeting I attended was staffed by a lot of people who had 9-5 jobs and were able to take out an evening after work to attend.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
It always seems weird to me that almost nobody in this thread makes the obvious point- people who are born with money usually eventually make more money. And they usually make more money without adding one penny in value to what they do.
If you’ve had good luck with lawyers, well, good on you. I haven’t. Some are lazy, some are dumb, some are thieves, very occasionally one is honest and smart, but I can tell you one thing for sure- there’s no penalty for a lawyer being dumb, lazy, and a thief. Well, maybe one- not getting a million-dollar bonus the year you bankrupt your company.
Reading a thread like this is a little slice-of-life look at a country so befuddled by thirty years of fairy tales that nobody can even remember reality. Nobody here ever took sociology? You have no clue that the rich have a leg up to begin with? Well, I’m sure we’ll all treasure the wisdom you bring to a discussion of Hard Times.
It’s all part of the magic of Democracy, that the richest will man the barricades to defend John McCain and Sarah Palin, and the poorest will turn out to vote for Obama. Do we need any further comment on who the smart people are who are going to save our asses?
March 9th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Scientists and engineers who are the ones who enable society to become more productive over time and who are listed as part of the catagory of people who work very hard, and they do, by and large do not earn more than $250,000 a year. Thus they will benefit from Obama’s tax plan. They do earn more than the average American, but not that much more. The same is true for the vast majority of Ph.D’s.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Better watch out with this work stuff YM. Before you know it you will be labeled a Marxist and you don’ want to be on that list.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
As anyone who went to an Ivy League school knows, this is bullshit. People party no matter how hard they study.
Let’s be clear here: there is nothing about free markets that guarantees meritocracy. All that free market theory claims is that markets determine the best use of people’s resources when the only possible change of resource distribution is through consensual contracts or exchanges. It says nothing about whether the resulting distribution is “just” or “meritocritous”.
Part of economic success is due to hard work, but another part is due to chance: being gifted, being born to the right parents, being born in the right place at the right time, having the right friends, etc. What determines your compensation is largely not how hard you work but how valuable your product is to rich people.
I’m sure Warren Buffett has something to say about this.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
This is such an important issue that gets to the core of why republicans feel so great about themselves that they shouldn’t have to pay taxes. Republicans think that the rich deserve to keep all the money they make, which is one thing to argue about, but they also think that people making $250k or more are the ones that make society function and make the world livable for the rest of us. I think a cutoff of $250k a year delineates the differences–we have schoolteachers, college professors, virtually every scientist and engineer, airline pilots, all serious government jobs, most doctors, most lawyers that aren’t corporate shills or criminal defense attorneys, almost all prosecutors, all policemen, firemen…the list goes on and on. Above $250k, they have managers, executives, stockbrokers, board members, ceo’s, and professionals that are corporate shills, as well as some bottom up entrepreneurs. But republicans think that anyone making less than that is untalented, self-indulgent, or lazy.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Much sacrifice, top schools, a well-paying position at the top law firm in the world in my practice-area (in the top group as well, I might add) — and I would trade it all at the drop of a hat for a $100K+ position doing, well, pretty much anything (would gladly shovel feces, whatever…). I think that the work-week for those in my peer-group (in law, in any case) averages about 100 hours-a-week, vacations and even simple, planned dinners and get-togethers are not realistic (might have to fly out to Dar es Salaam, Baku, etc., at the drop of a hat). I don’t necessarily want to kick back in the Bahamas with a cocktail for 30 years, but experiencing life quite literally from the office/hotel room doesn’t seem like such a great prize for the work put in. That’s why some of us, trapped by trappings of success, look at the less-credentialed with a tinge of jelousy–they may have been smarter in the ways that count after all!
From my observations, only doctors have it worse. Everything your solidly-middle-class parents might have thought, but didn’t experience, is probably wrong about the professional classes. I would definitely say that, in terms of public good, an hour of my time is worth a lot less than most of the professions that make less than I do (the same goes for the aggregate of my time); I would even say that, often, it goes on the wrong side of the good/bad balance sheet. It’s basically six-figure mercenary work for eight-figure+ individuals and nine-figure+ corporations, directed mostly against each other, but a great deal of the time against movers, teachers, local communities, etc. I think that lots of folks in similar situations feel the same way, and thus the professional class has been only too happy to support Obama almost whole-heartedly (a few partners here feel otherwise, but that problem will soon be solved actuarially).
I think that rather than a moral comparison of jobs, the direction to look into is the wholesale re-structuring of the labor force. There’s an assembly line that takes the best high school, college and grad school students of all socioeconomic backgrounds and redistributes them to work in the interests of the top 1% (this is essentially a capitalist reading of it; we call this “efficient allocation”). This analysis is usually performed w/r/t manufacturing and IT jobs, but a study incorporating current job-loss data, macro-economic patterns, and so on. Look also into informal networks and soft skills (this will probably take someone from our world, not a typical, clueless PhD). It’s a different world out here than the world of yesteryear that public policy-makers see, and we could all benefit from a more realistic reflection on the facts.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
This whole discussion is to me the crux of the problem with the world’s economy as it is set up. Instead of production for the sake of increasing human happiness the wheels grind to produce .. what? Things to play around with in the few discretionary hours we get. “Hard work” somehow becomes a virtue, detached from any process towards real meaningful ends, and all because the dynamic of the system in which if you slip up the next guy who is willing to give up more discretionary hours will instantly take your place. The only thing keeping people mildly sane is the laws instituting a 40-hour work week, else there would be no such thing as free time for anybody except the ownership class. And anybody who belongs to the working class that isn’t spending all waking hours working would be demonized as lazy. What a world.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
The notion that lawyers as a group work really hard – harder than, say, movers – to get where they are is patently absurd.
First, one of the reasons why lawyers earn higher than average salaries right out of law school is because of high cost of legal education in THIS country. You’ll note that other common law countries, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand etc., don’t have mandatory 3 year law education in order to practice law.
But in the U.S. we do, because the lawyers have a nice racket for themselves by restricting entry into legal practice. Accounting is a more complicated than most legal practice, but you can become an accountant with an undergrad degree.
But I am a graduating law student and have many many friends at various law schools, and it’s a joke. The whole thing is a damn joke, and the idea that you need to study long hours to master the law is absurd. As with any other profession in this world – from plumber to engineer – you learn through doing, and from looking this shit up in the book as you work. It’s not that complicated.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I think that the work-week for those in my peer-group (in law, in any case) averages about 100 hours-a-week, vacations and even simple, planned dinners and get-togethers are not realistic (might have to fly out to Dar es Salaam, Baku, etc., at the drop of a hat).
I call bullshit. That’s 14 1/4 hours a day, 7 days a week, not including a half hour commute each way, which puts you at 15 hours a day. Let’s guess another hour each day to shit, shower, and shave. Maybe you work a couple hundred hour weeks a year. But please…
Maybe you bill a 100 hours a week, because legal billing borders on the fraudulent. But that’s a different story.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I am a lawyer and my husband is a doctor. He works at least 100 hours a week, there is not a single day he doesn’t go into the hospital to round. If you broke down his salary by hour, it would be shocking low. He spent nine years training for his current position (not including medical school) during which time he never made more than $75,000, in the early years much less, though still working 100 hours a week or more. It is only now that we are in our late thirties that he is making a salary that would push us into the highest tax bracket, and then just barely (I am currently home with our two young children).
We both voted for Obama. We did not make a windfall during the Bush years, with the AMT taking away most of the benefit from the Bush tax cut. I’m fine with the return to the Clinton tax rates, we all knew that was coming. I’m not fine with the phase-out of the mortgage deduction, state and local tax deduction, and charity deduction. Those phaseouts in aggregate will probably double the amount by which our taxes increase, and I don’t recall Obama mentioning them even once during the campaign.
If rolling-back the Bush taxes isn’t enough to fund Obama’s increases to the budget, we all should be paying more — not just the so-called wealthy. I’m not running out to vote for any republicans as long as they run with the Limbaugh crowd, but should they ever return to the middle, I would consider it. I don’t doubt there are others similarly situated who would do the same.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Rochelle. There are a lot more of us than of you.
P.S. Your husband needs to make a lot less money- just like doctors do in every other country. Then you won’t have to worry so much about taxes!
March 9th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
We should really take a look at how long it takes to train a lawyer or a doctor. Probably training the doctor takes more time. But it seems to me that we overinvest in the education that then “requires” we pay astronomical sums to doctors and, to a somewhat lesser extent, lawyers.
It’s clear that you can be a lawyer with an undergrad degree. So we definitely require too much formal education in order to practice law. That may also be the case with doctors.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
rochelle, to my knowledge, the mortgage and charity deductions aren’t being phased out. They may just end up being deducted at a lower rate.
Doctors, it should be said, have it rough because while they actually do well financially, their peers in their income group are making money off of money, taking a “cut” of the deals they do, while doctors actually work for a living and are paid for their labor. It puts them in an odd position of on one hand having their ostensible earning power put them in the “Republican” category while at the same time realizing that their fellow Republicans are making money off of wealth rather than “honest work.”
March 9th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
We also need a lot more PAs and advanced practice nurses doing primary care, rather than expensive (and expensively educated) MDs. And yes, I have personally experienced a couple of different PAs as primary care providers, and both were great.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
@abc
That’s exactly my point; there are not enough hours in the day! I do cheat, on occasion, and read the news, blogs, etc. to stay sane (all non-billable), but the billable requirement is still a little over 50 hours a week, and that requires about 75 hours of actual work. That’s for a standard deal lawyer. The next tier is closer to 100; the toughest part of the equation is that most of this time absolutely has to be productive to remain competitive. Also done my share of 72-hour closings, to come back into work again the next morning after three hours of sleep and a shower.
Most of us live close to work (walkable for me), and absolutely require services like housekeepers, nannies, etc., because there is quite literally no time to do anything else–I feel a great sense of accomplishment if I can get to the dishes, but also some guilt that I didn’t allocate the time to “value-addative” activities like working on my toddler’s application to an ultra-competitive pre-school. The best way I know of managing this schedule is by shaving off some sleep time.
By the way, as is clear from my original post, I take no pride from neither the substance not the “difficulty” of this work. I am only describing the phenomenon more accurately, in my opinion, than what I’ve seen reflected thus far. The larger point is about the economic incentives that create this employment tier, and how it siphons off potential reasearch scientists, engineers, etc. (you know, the generally socially useful professions).
March 9th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Well it is an option for the titans of industry to pay the people who work under them more, or save themselves money by firing those workers who are less productive than they are. Personally, I think that teachers, nannies, baby-sitters, maids, secretaries, janitors, etc. are agents in the “productivity” of the lords. I’m reminded of a sergeant who was self-righteous about the condition of his uniform as if his wife didn’t take it to the dry cleaners. When challenged, he didn’t deny that she polished his shoes, too.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Hi Matt,
Just wanted to thank you for pointing out exactly what physically hard work movers do. My husband’s DC moving labor service hears one comment repeatedly from his high level, meritocracy customers – and that is that his job is the one job they can not do. Not only the physically backbreaking aspect of it but moving labor work requires a great deal of diplomacy as most people who are moving are extremely stressed out.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
It’s all in the definition. IIRC, using a broad definition of small business, ~10 years ago, most small business owners cleared around $25,000 a year. Earnings at small businesses haven’t gone up a factor of 10 since then.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
That’s exactly my point; there are not enough hours in the day! I do cheat, on occasion, and read the news, blogs, etc. to stay sane (all non-billable), but the billable requirement is still a little over 50 hours a week, and that requires about 75 hours of actual work. That’s for a standard deal lawyer. The next tier is closer to 100; the toughest part of the equation is that most of this time absolutely has to be productive to remain competitive. Also done my share of 72-hour closings, to come back into work again the next morning after three hours of sleep and a shower.
What firm requires you to bill at a rate that gets you to 100 hours a week, every week? Not Cravath, not Skadden. You’re full of shit.
You said you work 100 hrs/week regularly. I said you’re full of shit. 70-75 hours of work time to bill 50/hours week. I believe that. That produces 2500 billable hours a year.
Now, I suspect you bill 50 hours a week without working the full 70 by double billing. Or you bill time in you spend in the shower “thinking” about a client’s problem. Whatever.
By that measure, Yglesias probably works every non-sleeping hour of the week.
All of this sort of puffery is meant to justify the insane prices and wages that lawyers “command” that make them oh so much more precious than your average mover, or salesperson.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Most of us live close to work (walkable for me), and absolutely require services like housekeepers, nannies, etc., because there is quite literally no time to do anything else–I feel a great sense of accomplishment if I can get to the dishes, but also some guilt that I didn’t allocate the time to “value-addative” activities like working on my toddler’s application to an ultra-competitive pre-school.
Holy shit dude. You should be on the cover of Newsweek’s next issue: Are We All Overachievers? This is the sort of just-so story about a hyper-competitive lawyer and his French-speaking, chess-playing, 3 year old wunderkind that they love to write every few years.
And you have time to read and comment on Matt Yglesias’ blog. You’re a better human being than I.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I love the idea that going to school instead of working as a migrant worker picking fruit or whatever is a sacrifice.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I’m not a doctor or a lawyer myself–thank God–but one of the great things about rooming with people who go into those professions is how it demystifies the process. So I know that , logically speaking, Doctor Johnson != God, even though he’s wearing a tie and a lab coat and has a clipboard, and I am wearing a minidress made of tissue paper. It’s a valuable thing to know.
Take the moaning about billable hours from our downtrodden lawyer friends on the thread. Here’s a recent primer from the New York Times on “How to bill 25 hours in one day:”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E4DF1F3FF93BA35757C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon
“The lawyer’s billable hour, like the quark or the gluon, is a convenient fiction. Its measurement varies from observer to observer and depends upon position.”
You’d damn well better believe it. That dinner at the nicest restaurant in town? Not only expensed, but billable as well!
Oh, the humanity!
March 9th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
I’m a doctor (academic physician) and my wife’s a government lawyer (Ivy League graduates, etc.) Our current combined family income is well north of Obama’s $250,000 line. So, as a member of the much maligned meritocracy, I thought I’d add a few comments to the end of this thread.
We and our friends routinely work 55-65 hr/week, but frequently have days/weeks where the hours go substantially higher. That is not to say that doctors and lawyers have a monopoly on long hours. There are millions of people who work the equivalent of these kinds of hours in all walks of life and don’t get paid as well as we currently do.
Our work is mentally/emotionally stressful but not physically demanding. Consequently, we can reasonably expect to be able to work well into our 60’s and 70’s. This is a major perk. When my wife was starting out, she clerked for a judge that dealt with a lot of disability cases and there was a constant stream of cases involving men and women in their 40’s and 50’s whose bodies had basically been broken by years of hard physical labor.
We in our peak earning years, our 50s, and didn’t always make this much money. You need to have a highly developed appetite for delayed gratification. We were both in school our entire 20’s, and a night out on the town was McDonalds. When I was a resident, we used to calculate that we were being paid less than minimum wage, given our 110 hr+ work week. What with medical school, graduate school, residency training and fellowships, I didn’t get my first “real job” until I was 35, much to the surprise of my mother in law.
The vast majority of our colleagues are in similar income brackets and voted overwhelmingly for Obama. I know no one who would pull a Galt and scale back their work to protest paying an extra 2% on the taxes. That’s just a right wing fantasy. Yes, most of us work long hours, but society has treated us very well. It’s perfectly reasonable to ask us to pay more taxes to get the country back on track. (And to ask the real rich – whose income comes mostly from capital gains) to pay their share as well.)
March 9th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I enjoyed the “serious small-business owners” phrase.
I live next door to a small business owner. His leaving in the morning reminds me that it’s time to wake up, and his returning reminds me that it’s time to start dinner.
But he’s not a serious small business owner by Schiffren’s criterion. I know this because he lives next door to me.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Know who else has a highly developed appetite for delayed gratification? The working poor saving all their dimes in the hopes that one of their children will be able to attend college
McDonalds will be their special treat for the next twenty years.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Re: Most of us live close to work (walkable for me), and absolutely require services like housekeepers, nannies, etc.,
Boo-f*cking-hoo, Alex. Now pay your taxes, sit down, shut up, and be grateful that you don’t have to spend your summers cutting sugarcane, Cuba style.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
“Or you bill time in you spend in the shower ‘thinking’ about a client’s problem. Whatever.”
And never mind the amount of unpaid time spent by hourly workers spent worrying about their job security or how they’re going to meet mortgage or rent with a wage cut or any number of work-caused humiliations that ruin the lives of the non-elites, all of which are not, ahem, “billable.”
March 11th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Yes, people who are in the professional class have earned their incomes, I’m sure. However, they should pay their fair share in income taxes. But when you compare physical labor to mental labor you are not just talking professional against labor. I worked for twenty years in a shop as a hydraulic pipe fitter building large Hydraulic presses and Mechanical presses for the Auto mfg. industry, Ford, GM, Chrysler, and the aerospace industries, like Boeing and Lockheed. Not only did it take physical endurance and strength, it took brains to figure out the trigonometric functions to run the steel pipe and tubing dealing with pressures up to 5000psi on some of the larger presses. Occasionally, one had to point out to the suits (engineers or designers) who drew the prints and piping schematics, that what they had drawn just would not work practically in the actual building of the machine. And they were the ones making the big bucks! So the argument isn’t just Brains vs. Brawn. Sometimes the job requires both. I never made more than $36,000.00 a year and I was taxed the going rate on income, Social Security and Medicare taxes.
And I agree with PS on blog113. I was one of those people. I worked a lot of 50 and 60 hr. weeks to get the presses to the customers on time, and during those 20 yrs. I had two hernias, and a major back operation. I’m now on retirement/disability at 61. So do I lose sleep over people paying a little extra when they’ve made $250,000 or more? Not a wink. Why shouldn’t they go back to the top marginal rate that they were paying in the ’90’s? It’s only 2% more.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Good afternoon. How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?
I am from Republic and too bad know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Registered travel agency provides low fare flights between the united states and china.”
Thanks
. Glory.