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A true liberal utopia has everything nationalized. Everyone makes the same pay and everyone gets the same raise. "Everyone is a winner". But I'd wager that everyone would be living a hand to mouth existence.
"More deserving" has nothing to do with wages. Demand for that job to be done versus the supply of people willing and capable of doing that job properly is what determines wages. "Deserving" is totally irrelevant.
In your flawed analogy, the job of flipping a burger is low demand. Why? Because I can flip a burger on my stove/grill. Anyone can. But now and again, the convenience of getting one in a couple minutes at McDonalds makes it worth it to pay someone else to do it, assuming the price makes sense. Raise prices by $1-2 per burger because you implement "more deserving" wages, and I'll flip my own burger, tyvm. That is what is known as "decrease in demand based on price." When your revenue falls because I chose to decrease my demand for your product at the price you sell it, you have a profitability problem which you can solve one of two ways (or some combo of both): you can raise revenue by finding ways to increase my demand for your product (which given the known quantity that is the Big Mac, means lower price) or you can cut your costs. Now, I challenge you as the business owner of a retail outlet working at ~5-6% margins...your market share and monthly revenue has dropped off since this new price increase, and you want to save that operation. Tell me, in this "more deserving" model of yours, what do you do?
Same goes for garbage collection. I can take my own garbage to a dump, but I pay property taxes that fund (in part) the garbage collection from my tree lawn. If my town council decided that the wages of the garbage collectors should go up because they are" more deserving" then they have to find the money to pay for that. If they take from other needed services in the budget or raise taxes to cover it, they have angered the people who VOTE, thus decreasing the demand for them to stay in office. See how it goes?
Surgeons are a product of 10-14 years of post-secondary education where they are almost always at the top of every class they take. That means very very low supply. They do a job that literally saves lives, meaning very very high demand. Deserving has nothing to do with their wage, but super low supply and super high demand explains a ton.
Seriously, everyone should read Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics." A lot of these ridiculous "more fair/deserving" arguments would just go away.
Duh. I had no idea that a surgeon took more time to train than a burger flipper. You are missing my point entirely.
well Rachael Maddow broadcast his 2005 return...he paid 38 million in taxes that year...... I would be willing to bet that that is more than what I, you, and ten others on here have all paid in a LIFETIME combined
do you wish to deny that...or are you a billionaire posting here in CD??? I would guess your occupation is a medical coder for the VA...maybe...
You mean the way your Conservative Christian President pays his taxes....?????
If I had the money he pays accountants to deal with his taxes, I would be rich. He got audited a lot. In fact he was in the middle of one during the election. He takes advantage of what the tax laws allow him. He is not a liberal, so you can count on the IRS to catch any mistakes he has made.
Duh. I had no idea that a surgeon took more time to train than a burger flipper. You are missing my point entirely.
Your point was who "deserves" what as far as pay goes, given the consumer's immediate demand for he product/service that person provides. That was flawed reasoning because at no point did you (and I realize now you were doing 3rd person generalizing) define demand properly. Yes, the burger flipper is important when you want a burger, but your demand is not infinite. It has a price that defines it beyond just "you want a burger." Same for the garbage collector, same for the surgeon. At various times yes, you may have a want for these things, but the price you are willing to pay for them will define how much demand you actually have.
When you want a BigMac, do you have $15 worth of demand for it? $150? $15,000? No, you have ~$4 worth of demand. They may indeed feel "more important" than a surgeon at that specific moment, but they are still only $4 worth of important, because any higher than that and you'll flip your own burger. Same for garbage collection. The collectors may indeed be more important than a surgeon the day of pickup, but at no point would their demand be such that you'd pay surgeon prices to have the weekly pickup occur. You'd simply haul your trash to the dump instead. Your demand, and thus their importance, has a limit called price.
I am not being a jerk to you, and get that you were explaining why some people feel the burger flipper "deserves" a good living from that particular craft, but the deserving argument always leaves out what price people are willing to pay for a thing, which is what defines their level of demand relative to the supply.
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