From: ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark)
Subject: Re: Why pick on the kids? Let's get the fat cats!
Keywords: overpaid salary-cap wages tax complexity
Organization: ITC, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Distribution: aus
Date: 26 Aug 92 12:27:51 GMT

dyfl@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Daniel Y Lam) writes:

>ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark) writes:

>>I left school 8 years ago. That year our principal had all of the seniors in
>>one room and asked "How many of you (there was 167 of us) are going to be
>>tradesmen?" Two (2) people put up their hands.  Those two also were two of
>>the least capable academically in the year. What all of the people wanted to
>>do was become accountants, solicitors, scientists, engineers, bank managers
>>etc. So two people will produce our houses or manufactured goods (obviously
>>quite a few of those who left in Junior would end up in labouring or
>>manufacturing jobs) and the rest will produce nothing tangible. The rest
>>will rely upon the fees, taxes etc charged upon those 2 and the Junior
>>leavers to maintain their jobs. Why is this expectation that everyone can

>An excellent point against so-called "free education".

>Hmmm.. can't find any other good points, though.  Do you really think
>accountants, lawyers, etc... are non-productive or not as productive
>as real tradesman?

>If these fat cats produce no wealth, how come companies are prepared
>to pay them?  Remember, companies are run by greedy capitalists,
>whose aim is to maximize profit.  Why would they waste money to
>employ someone who produces no wealth for the company?  No, employers
>only employ you if, from their point of view, the wealth you produce
>for them is higher than the salary they pay you.

>The same cannot be said for government entities.

My apologies for getting sidetracked fifty times in the one article, however
if you had read on you would see how greedy capitalist bosses would beleive
that their whiz-kid exec who landed 20 mill worth of deals last year is 
worth mega-bucks to the company, not because the decisions made by whiz kid
were the right decisions just the lucky ones that the firm cleaner could
have made. I beleive Australian employers have been self-hoodwinked by the
boom years, as if some star executives were responsible for their business 
doing so well in good times.  When down times come they feel that it's
because they haven't got talented enough staff and offer even higher wages
for the positions that seemed to be responsible for the boom years. This
topic is too complicated to not write a book about and I feel my tongue
getting caught on the words I type.
 
 But yes, though we need some lawyers and accountants in a just society, we
do have too many now.  The reason we have too many is that our society is 
constantly adding to it's legal complexity to fill loopholes.  This in
turn creates more loopholes requiring more legislation and more legal people
to oversee, enforce and advise about it. It is a self feeding process which
will and is escalating.

	We must clean out the whole legal system from constitution up, to
simplify it and to make it more relevant to our society. If we did this we 
would suddenly have thousands of previously overworked solicitors and
accountants out of work and looking for other employment.  However, unless
we are willing to drop our standard of living there is no way we can do the
same thing to our primary and secondary producers (farmers,labourers,
tradesmen etc). 

	Finally, there is nothing wrong with free education and increased
education for the masses so long as it doesn't come hand in hand
with an expectation of a highly payed, high status job and a
non-acceptance of physical labour employment when the opportunity
presents itself.
Newsgroups: aus.politics