To be fair ralph, it’s not as if any Joe Schmo can walk in off the street, fill out an application and become a high paid judge. To reach that level, you’ve pretty much have to work your ass off and put a lot of money into it.
I’m sensing a bit of hostility towards lawyers, fort. You might want to watch it, there’s a few of 'em on these boards (and quite a few law students, such as myself.)
Might want to watch how far out you throw that blanket statement.
How do you figure?
My mother was a health care worker. She had job offers from several area hospitals, one of which was a government job with the VA hospital.
She judged them all. Salary, benefits, job responsibilities, interesting work load, job security.
The VA hospital had to compete with all the other private hospitals to try to get her to go there. They weren’t at all exempt from the market forces. They compete for qualified workers.
By the way, she chose to work for the VA. It paid less than some of the other positions, but for her (at the time a single mom) the issue of job security was very important.
lezlers,
You are very perceptive. I did not mean to make a blanket statement without some qualifiers. You have positive and negatives in any profession. It is only because I hold lawyers to a much higher standard (rightly so) that I made my qualifing statement.
I know a few attorneys that are VERY FINE PEOPLE and true pillars of the community, and I know other attorneys that I wouldn’t trust if I turned my back on them. Typically, those without political ambitions and strong moral foundations are the same ones with a sense of honor and dignity befitting the occupation they hold. Those attorneys who are driven by material gains and political ambitions are the ones most likely to take the low road and fall from my trust. It is a very difficult path, not to succumb to the tempations of the position.
I spent over 4 years of my life working with attorneys and judges so I speak with a certain amount of experience. Yes, it is a few rotten apples that ruin the reputation of the whole barrel and I in no means intend to cast a shadow of malice on those who have tried to steer a course of honesty and intergity over their careers.
Still, I feel that many lawyers use their positions to an unfair advantage for their own gains.
Anyway, this is not the proper forum for venting, I am sorry if I so offended anyone, I did not intend to digress or flame.
Please forgive my digression and let’s get back on the topic of overpaid occupations…
fortbruce: next time I’m working on a prospectus at 3 am, or am on my third day of less-than-two-hours sleep during merger negotiations, I’ll remember that I’m “grossly overpaid.”
Here’s a newsflash, bub: large-firm lawyers work in a very competitive environment. Clients want a quality product at a relatively cheap price, and they’ll happily take their business to your competitors if they think they’re being overcharged. We charge what the market will bear. We do well, but it’s hardly an easy paycheck.
And as for ralph124c’s diatribe against judges, he’s ignoring the time judges spend reading briefs and tending to court administration matters. Oh, and being woken up to issue search warrants. All for a small fraction of what their law firm brethren earn. Nobody joins the bench to get rich.
Sam: You are, of course, right on this. I took this more as an IMHO type OP.
DEWEY CHEATEM & How: most of the administrative work in the are done by the clerks of the court-he’s the one who sets the schedule, hires and fires, and generally runs the court. These clerks are (in Massaachusetts) generally well-connected political hacks. The real attraction of being a judge: you work about 20 weeks/year, and retire with a big fat pension-then you can go back into legal practice, and call back on the favors you’ve handed out over the years. All in all, not a bad little racket!
That’s bullshit. It’s easy to become part of the “Old Boy Network” and become an institutional trader. Just go to Harvard or Wharton or some other top notch business school.
No, no, no.
The most overpaid people are those in the entertainment so-called “industry.” Brad Pitt, Jennifer Anniston (sp?), Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Snoop Dog, et al, not to mention their various managers, producers, etc.
Pro athlete risk phyiscal injury. Well, maybe not golfers.
I’d agree with Lawyers (particularly what we call ‘solicitors’ over here). For instance you can’t buy or sell a house without a solicitor and they charge a percentage(!) of the value of the property!!! This means the amount they get from a transaction for a house worth €1 million is vastly more than the amount they get for a house worth €200K even though the work involved is the same.
Recently a female solicitor was on the radio blowing the lid off this ‘protected’ racket. She charges a flat fee - not a percentage and has now been ostracised by others in her field - not being allowed to join lawyer’s societies etc.
Lawyers? - bandits morelike.
As a hard working conscientious bandit who never overcharges, I resent your implication.
As has already been pointed out about athletes, the issue isn’t how hard the work is. The issue is whether or not they’re worth it. Entertainers aren’t paid all that money by accident, they’re paid that because they’re worth it.
To use Letterman as an example, the guy makes a huge pile of money, like $20 million a year. But his hosting the CBS late night show is worth far more than $20 million to CBS; the marginal difference in advertising revenue created by having Letterman host that show is enormous, not just for ads during the 11:30-12:30 time slot, but after 12:30, since having a successful show tends to raise ratings for other shows on the same network, especially the show that immediately follows it. If they replaced Letterman with some nobody, all that advertising revenue would be instantly lost. Worse yet, if Letterman went to another network, they’d lose it all to that network. Paying Letterman $20 million means the company makes $40 million or more in ads. It’s a good deal.
It seems to me Letterman is a good investment for CBS. The same can be said for anyone else. Jennifer Aniston doesn’t get paid a jillion dollars for “Friends” just for kicks, she gets paid that because she’s an irreplaceable cast member of a show that makes NBC a humongous pile of money. If that wasn’t true, NBC would have either cancelled the show or fired the cast and hired cheaper actors. Brad Pitt’s name on a movie marquee can generate $20-$30 million in extra revenue, at least, so why shouldn’t he command a high price? He’s worth it.
Well, I started out as an institutional bond trader and can say that there were an awful lot of Harvard MBA’s chomping at the bit outside our offices because they didn’t know someone. Generally, those traders/salesmen from Harvard got jobs (and probably got into Harvard in the first place) because they knew someone. I’ve got no dog in this fight. Hell, I knew someone.
Top pay is not average pay.
This is like saying teachers earn $100,000. Sure, it’s on the payscale at nearly every school, but only as consultant to the mayor, not as a classroom teacher.
As a lawyer, I’m generally surprised when I read what other lawyers earn. Oftentimes I will read that relatively big-name attorneys earn well less than seven figures. Which is not chickenfeed - of course. But certainly far less than so many executive salaries I read about. Certain very successful PI ir class-action lawyers are an exception, of course. Also, major rain-makers get compensated in relation to the billing they bring in. But for rainmakers, only those with the biggest institutional clients earn more than a couple of million.
I read recently about a largefirm lawyer who was suing his firm over his compensation. I forget the exact figures, but I believe even his argument was that he was entitled to maybe $9 million. A huge income, of course - but is it so large that it should make news in this manner? Compared to CEOs, athletes, actors, etc.?
As for judges, I do not believe the Supremes even make $200G (tho they have countless perks and are treated close to royalty in DC.) Still, not a mindblowing salary for someone at the very top of their profession. I believe other federal judges make around $150G. Significantly less than they would earn in private practice.
The other element of practicing law (and judging) that people may overlook is the amount of stress involved. Suffice it to say that it was sufficient for me to leave private practice and return to the federal government.
So now I am an overpaid government bureaucrat…
I’m not sure what folks’ basis is for considering government workers overpaid. But salary scales are generally a matter of public record. I work for the federal gov’t, which IME is generally higher paid than similar state or local jobs. I am in a relatively highly graded position, and after 17 years here, I earn enough to support a very comfortable lifestyle. I believe my starting salary in 1986 was around $19G. Just about everyone I know who practices law for a corporation or in private practice makes considerably more than me. But most of them work longer hours, or experience more stress, or greater demands on their private time.
To conclude, in my experience it is a small percentage of government workers of all kinds who earn over $100G, and extremely few who exceed $125G. You have to decide for yourself whether in today’s economy that is necessarily an excessive salary.
It always helps if you know someone or are born into a profession. I wished my parents made more of themselves growing up. Maybe then I could work at McKinsey for $150,000 like Chelsea Clinton.
What is mind boggling to me is when I hear people who make 10x my salary bitching and complaining because it isn’t enough - partners or sr managers at my old consulting firm complaining about property taxes that are more than my years salary or derivatives traders complaining how their firm ONLY pays $500,000 a year. For all the money I’m making, I would have been better off taking all that fucking college money and playing it on a craps table in Vegas.
RickJay, you and I are proceeding from different assumptions. You say essentially, “If the salary is good enough for CBS (or Viacom, or whoever owns CBS at the moment) that they make a profit off his show, and its good enough for Letterman because it keeps him in cigars and baby food, it must be good for the society as a whole.” I don’t buy that, mainly because I’m not CBS or Letterman. Just because CBS and Letterman are happy with the arrangement is no reason that I should be happy with it.
I’d be just as happy with a lower priced person hosting the show, (and hosting ABC’s Nightline and NBC’s Tonight show ) that way the network could charge less for ads and still make a profit. The network’s ad costs and show production costs, including the host’s high salary, gets passed on to me, the consumer, and I’d be happier paying less for my goods and services.
How do the show production costs get passed on to you? I’ve never been charged a dime for watching David Letterman.
And while YOU may not care if someone cheaper hosts the show - and neither do I, I don’t like Letterman anymore - apparently, millions do.
But would you really (or, more to the point, would the viewing audience overall)? There’s been a long line of failed (and presumably lower-priced) late night hosts competing against Leno and Letterman…
Television is afterall, a market driven by corporate greed and profits, not by what’s best for the viewer. This preoccupation we have had with overvaluing entertainers is really only be evident for the most part since the advent of mass distribution of recording. (e.g. When recordings, radio and television became available) One might say, that after Guglielmo Marconi’s contributions to radio and Thomas Edison and Emil Berliner perfected and distributed their respective sound recordings and motion picture technologies (Edison contributed to both!) and Charles Francis Jenkins, John Logie Baird, Allen B. DuMont, Philo T. Farnsworth, et. al for their work on the “boob-tube” . That all this over-valuing of performers really took place, this stems from the early part of the 20th century and on to today.