Tricke up or trickle down?

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

2 hours ago, uhtred said:

Money provides a way to adjust how many people go into each field. If there are not enough skilled people, the wages in a field will rise and encourage more people to go into that field.  Its far from perfect, but it mostly works. 

This principle seems only to hold in private sector work. In Nursing, droves are leaving because they haven't had a pay rise in 7 years (promises are there but with small print).

Nursing and Medicine are, I would say, vital work, but wages aren't rising as workforce numbers are falling.

[gisiebob]

4 hours ago, uhtred said:

 Without financial motivation I don't think you would get the right mix of people.  Lots of people want to be landscape photographers, more than the world needs, but not so many want to maintain legacy accounting software. This is why its much easier to get paid to write COBOL than to travel to beautiful places and photog raph then.

 

Some jobs require a great deal of training, sometimes that training uses very valuable resources (for instance becoming an airline pilot).

 

Money provides a way to adjust how many people go into each field. If there are not enough skilled people, the wages in a field will rise and encourage more people to go into that field. Its far from perfect, but it mostly works. 

and why would we be losing all these complex skills? absolutely there would be some "I only did it for the money"s. but would there not be just as many "I can 't do it because of money"s? wouldn't the pool of usef ul labor and trade and technology be flooded by those that find themselves without purpose now that they do not require themselves to profit?

[what the face]

8 hours ago, uhtred said:

18 hours ago, gisiebob said:

 

Without financial motivation I don't think you would get the right mix of people.  Lots of people want to be landscape photographers, more than the world needs, but not so many want to maintain legacy accounting software.

Traditionally the artist, the creatives have been motivated less by financial reward, more by sharing their gifts, their genius with others.

 

I believe the financial motive applies as well for the aspiring landscape photographer to take the software maintenance job,  thereby separating their preferred calling,  their art  from the market based job.  Witness the actor waiting tables or the musician giving lessons or the starving writer etc.

Unless the artist can find a patron to support them, he/she must enter the wage marketplace earning enough to live and give the rest to his/her art.

Those established artists talented or lucky enough manage to get their art itself on the market, to get paid enough to cover their expenses.

 

Alas, most of us with an artistic spirit (and maybe even some talent) were not born with or were able to develop worthy genius.

A gift from the less gifted then, might be to bring some of our artistic spirit and outlook to the marketplace jobs we take.

 

This gifting within the market can be another motivation to "get the right mix of people".

As simple as mixing travel photos in a Powerpoint presentation or 

as detailed as creative problem solving with images or music.

Following our muse?

[uhtred]

19 hours ago, chandrakirti said:

This principle seems only to hold in private sector work. In Nursing, droves are leaving because they haven't had a pay rise in 7 years (promises are there but with small print).

Nursing and Medicine are, I would say, vital work, but wages aren't rising as workforce numbers are falling.

If there really are not enough nurses, why isn't there wage competition the way there is in other industries. Is there some legal wage control or limitation to entry that is preventing it? I don't know anything a out the industry. 

[uhtred]

16 hours ago, what the face said:

Traditionally the artist, the creatives have been motivated less by financial reward, more by sharing their gifts, their genius with others.

 

I believe the financial motive applies as well for the aspiring landscape photographer to take the software maintenance job,  thereby separating their preferred calling,  their art  from the market based job.  Witness the actor waiting tables or the musician giving lessons or the starving writer etc.

Unless the artist can find a patron to support them, he/she must enter the wage marketplace earning enough to live and give the rest to his/her art.

Those established artists talented or lucky enough manage to get their art itself on the market, to get paid enough to cover their expenses.

 

Alas, most of us with an artistic spirit (and maybe even some talent) were not born with or were able to develop worthy genius.

A gift from the less gifted then, might be to bring some of our artistic spirit and outlook to the marketplace jobs we take.

 

This gifting within the market can be another motivation to "get the right mix of people".

As simple as mixing travel photos in a Powerpoint presentation or 

as detailed as creative problem solving with images or music.

Following our muse?

Is the reason that a lot of artists have to take low paying jobs that there are more artists than society wants to support?  I'm not making a value judgement on art - just that there is a limited market for art so prices / wages are low.   People still go into art because they want to - and because in some cases (like photography) there are also talented amateurs who do it entirely for fun. 

 

 

[uhtred]

18 hours ago, gisiebob said:

and why would we be losing all these complex skills? absolutely there would be some "I only did it for the money"s. but would there not be just as many "I can 't do it because of money"s? wouldn't the pool of usef ul labor and trade and technology be flooded by those that find themselves without purpose now that they do not require themselves to profit?

Some skills are very expensive to learn - for example becoming an airline pilot requires very expensive hardware (airliner simulators cost $hundreds /hour).

 

Others require extensive training.  Supporting say a physics grad student probably requires $100K / year in equipment, and close to a similar amount in the time spent teaching.   

 

[gisiebob]

1 hour ago, uhtred said:

Some skills are very expensive to learn - for example becoming an airline pilot requires very expensive hardware (airliner simulators cost $hundreds /hour).

 

Others require extensive training.  Supporting say a physics grad student probably requires $100K / year in equipment, and close to a similar amount in the time spent teaching.   

 

those are certainly problems if things have costs.