It's not so much the jobs on the bottom end that would be vacant, there will always be people who don't want complicated work. It's the highly skilled jobs that take years of sacrifice to be able to do, the ones that are incredibly stressful and that force you to work longer hours with more responsibility that you will need to force people to do.

The difference is that you will be holding your best and brightest at the equivalent of knifepoint, demanding that they sacrifice more then their neighbors 'for the good of the country'.

Exactly. I would not do those jobs... I would just fail the test on purpose.

And in such a way the system would be self selecting :P

There are enough people who enjoy the challenge and respect that comes with management who would take on that role even if reward was not measured primarily through money. I know plenty of people who take that experience and training and all that hard work and use it to get a job doing something very important and stressful within an organisation like the Refugee Council. I also know of people who have chose n a lesser paid position because the job held more prestige than a similar, better paid job with a less respected company. And people who have chosen to take their skills and training and use it to bring on a worthy company (such as a local theatre company).

There are many co operatives operating in the UK (though not as many as in Germany: their company law is much more adaptive for co-operatives and mutuals) where, though there is a differantial in wages between different staff levels, those levels are set by the members as a whole. Often people will work in such co-operatives for significantly less than they would get in an ordinary firm.

Lots of people do jobs which are paid less than they could potentially earn elsewhere. Those who don't feel like working so hard for so little would preumably fail the test on purpose (rk) and do lesser jobs instead.

Actually, I would just leave such a place and go where people appreciate excellence.
Which is what happens to socialist nations, those who excel, the artists and inventors leave.

Again you are equating appreciation with financial reward. I would suggest that not everyone shares that definition of appreciation.

.

I do not feel that way. If that had been the case I would have chosen jobs/careers differently. I turned down a job with my family that would have made me quite rich. Even causing some hard feelings for a few years.
I did not want the job. The money was not even a consideration.
The two, the work and what you get for it, are not equivelent... but one must feel that the two are fairly connected.

Again though what constitutes a fair connection depends on your cultural relationship with currency.

Most cultures value it.



and people within those cultures exchange it for goods and services

Agreed Bruce. But this whole discussion of paying management the same as wokers began with a hypothetical society. I was suggesting that in such a hypothetical society the relationship between currency and culture would be different. In a culture that does measure value through currency obviously people want remuneration commensurate with their skills and workload.

Rk said he would leave such a culture and go where he is appreciated. I was saying that if he'd been born into the hypothetical culture we'd been discussing, he would relate differently to currency.

I choose to talk about my own experience (other posts in this thread have been criticised for talking generalities). Oh, and I have cleaned out the most appalling domestic kitchen bins full of maggots, so that's a start... I have tried to show from my own experience that I prefer a job in which I find "job satisfaction" to one which pays well, but will accept one which pays well to achieve my financial short term goals. If they were paid equally I'd choose the "worse" (to many people's way of thinking) job of washing shit off people, to sitting in a office.
I agree with DanaC that there are many people who thrive on the responsiblity/big wheel thing for the sake of it, rather than specifically for the cash. I'm not one of them.
in the above quotes the bold emphasis is mine. I don't mind that all these posts are about you. You are talking about your own experience.

Which brings us to the question of which goods and services you exchange it for ... which are necessities and which are luxuries?



and who is to decide? Or is it, if you step back a little, just common sense?

What's really peculiar to my mind about the way our culture relates to the economy, is that we usually pay more for luxuries than we do for necessities. Cetainly in terms of the way we pay wages. A doctor is a necessity for the country, a footballer is not. Who do we pay more?

If financial reward is how we measure our value to society, does this mean we realy value footballers above doctors, or does it mean that we don't actually indicate value through money?

who are you responding to?

oops. sorry, not sure why I wrote bruce :P thanks sky. I've amended it now :P

no appology required. It made me realize I didn't know UT's name. What IS UT's name? Hey UT what is your name? Chris? umm I have no idea.