- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Re: money can't buy you love

In Reply to: Re: money can't buy you love posted by Paul (PDK) on March 26, 1997 at 00:21:32:

>I'm really sorry to tell you this John, but even an Anesthesiologist who is not >even a doctor, makes an average of $ 220,000.00 per year after all expenses and >taxes. On the other hand, a McDonalds worker in the USA makes only $4.25 an >hour. Also, doctors deserve what they get. They are taking many risks every >time they see a patient... ie: contraction of AIDS, TB, etc. Not to mention >the risk of mal-practice suits. And believe me John, sueing the "shit" out of >McDonalds will not solve anything.

Well, I think you rather missed my point. I am not arguing what is fair for a doctor to earn (in Britain an anesthatologist IS a doctor and amongst the mostly highly trained and paid at that), rather what their primary interest should be. The guy who wrote at the head of all this described money as being the motivating factor. I find that offesive and morally abhorant. It would seem to me from your letter you agree. I don't think that doctors need to earn $200,000 a year, and to justify it in terms of danger money seems daft. Fireman earn a fraction of that for an equally important social role that I would consider to be just as dangerous. I think that any justification of that sort of salary must be that you are buying their skills, which in America at least, have cost the doctor an enormous amount of money to aquire. I can see some sense in that arguement, I would dispute what is reasonable recompense but to defend it as danger money doesn't really hold for me.

I would agree that suing doesn't really help anything and is normally pretty counterproductive but in a world where the little equality that is left between big business and the working man is in the courts, I fear that is where the battles must be fought.

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