Who would get the most pay if it was up to you ? Top 6

Nana8 political leaders are monkeys anyway but on second thoughts that’s a terrible disservice to monkeys

I might sound like a communist but everybody deserves to be paid enough to enjoy a decent life. Nobody should be profiteering at the expense of others.

Farmers! I’ve seen how hard my son-in-law works, this time of year 18 hour days can be the norm.

The best way to do this is to have proper job evaluation schemes that assess jobs on their skills level, qualification levels and personal skill levels and of course, availability, you need to pay to get people with scarce skills.

Skills are important of course, but so is the willingness to work unsocial hours or in horrible conditions. I'm not sure that spending a few years getting qualified should necessarily lead to a lifetime of high status, high pay and good conditions, when someone working night shifts in a dirty or dangerous role should be paid less and be seen as 'lesser' because their qualifications are lower or non-existent. There should be a trade-off so that people are encouraged to do the former if their skills are academic, and recompensed for a willingness to do the latter if they have more practical or manual abilities.

I also think that nobody in any organisation should be paid more than X times the hourly rate of anyone else. I'm never sure what the X should be, and could be persuaded up or down on that, but as an opening gambit, five times, with allowances made for preparation at home and things like travelling for work built into the multiplier? Can one employee be worth five others, and get five times as much for an hour's work?

To me, it is the gap between rich and poor that is so wrong, rather than the amounts. If we all earned more prices would rise, and if wages fall across the board then things would have to cost less. It is not right that some people can live wasteful lives with excessive consumption whilst others are doing without the basics when both are working a (say) 40 hour week.

I am wondering if having a degree still leads to having a highly paid, high status job. It certainly doesn’t here.

It depends on the degree.

No, not necessarily, but the jobs that people say deserve the most (eg scientists) require a high level of education, as do the majority of roles that are considered high status.

I'm not at all against education - I worked in the sector for most of my career. I don't think that education should be about getting a job, either. There is far more to it than that. I just think that there should be a reset of the value of what people bring to the workplace. If someone wants an indoor role, with comfortable surroundings and sociable hours then yes - train to do something that will bring that about, but should it necessarily attract an automatic upgrade in salary on top of that? Someone willing to (properly) look after the old, sick or disabled, for instance, might not need a degree, but they work round the clock and do things that I would find difficult to do well, although I am very well qualified on paper.

I think the reset will happen with AI whether we like it or not, really. Roles that require a human presence, maybe security guards, or hairdressers, could end up being more highly valued than graphic designers or architects, whose skills can be replicated by computers. They may be the wrong choices of jobs to use as examples, but I definitely believe that in even ten years' time the workplace will look very different from today.

The pandemic showed us what jobs were essential and those that we could manage without for a time or were needed at all.
Medical staff.
Scientists.
Cleaning staff including refuse collection.
Teaching staff.
Care workers.
Shop staff.

I'd add food producers and delivery drivers to the list of essential workers too.

We obviously didn't need footballers, sportsmen, artists or actors.

Oh, I think we needed actors. Without the TV to watch, lockdown would have been even more miserable.

I agree about food producers, growers, pickers and deliverers - again, this is the sort of thing that should be well-recompensed, IMO.

If a higher education (uni or a post-18 college qualification) didn't lead to better pay, why would anyone bother?

For self-development?

Out of interest, or to satisfy an enquiring mind?

To bridge the gap between adolescence and adulthood in a safe environment with other young people, and away from 'helicopter' parents?

To meet people from all over the world and learn that not everywhere and not everyone is the same as in your home town?

To learn about something that interests you and be able to contribute to society either by passing on cultural knowledge to the next generation or by putting what you have learnt to use in another way?

DoodleDog
Did you listen to the program where they said it will be the highest paid who are in danger of AI.

No, but it doesn't surprise me. There is going to be a real shake up of society as we know it, I think.

I'm not sure what career I'd be looking at if I were starting again, but I think the old certainties are no longer safe bets.

We obviously didn't need footballers, sportsmen, artists or actors.

Well, perhaps not so much in lockdown, and I might not put them near the top of my list of high earners. But what a sad, grey world it would be without them.

I think that they will be the sorts of jobs that survive AI. Nobody wants to watch robots play sport, and despite the special effects that AI will bring to films (and is already doing) the human side of acting can't be done artificially.

If AI takes over the Arts it will be a sad day, I think. It can replicate what has already been done, but the point of the Arts is to enrich the human experience, and I think you have to be human to understand that and use the Arts connect with others. A life with no books, plays, films and sport would be miserable.

I find it depressing when people only seem to value things in a utilitarian way. What we need for basic survival is not what we need as rounded people, and education is not the same as training.

Doodlebug I think the multiplier is currently 120x.
Take an average wage of 25,000 a multiplier of 10 makes it 250k, more than sufficient fir us all to buy our daily bread. Multiply total by X120 is obscene.

Police officers, medics and teachers.

The gap is widening as the rich get richer, apparently covid alone has made people billions.

silverlining48

Doodlebug I think the multiplier is currently 120x.
Take an average wage of 25,000 a multiplier of 10 makes it 250k, more than sufficient fir us all to buy our daily bread. Multiply total by X120 is obscene.

It is. I'm all in favour of rewarding effort and encouraging people to 'go the extra mile'; but as you say, SL one person being paid 120 times the rate of another is obscene.

Also, a lot of people can only increase their take-home pay by working more hours, with the knock-on effect that has on family life. They tend to be at the lower end of the pay scales. Those at the top have far more scope to get bonuses and promotions, which gives them a built-in advantage. It seems to me that if everyone had more of a stake in the company or organisation doing well, not only would it be fairer, but it would be more productive. It would take imagination to find ways to make it work, as one size won't fit all; but if the starting point was that the pay differentials were limited, it would be in the interests of those at the top to ensure that those at the bottom had higher pay, and if this were worked out per notional hour, rather than as an annual salary it would improve the lives of those working long hours to make ends meet (and those of their families).

inishowen

Police officers, medics and teachers.

And Fire & Rescue Officers

Chardy

If a higher education (uni or a post-18 college qualification) didn't lead to better pay, why would anyone bother?

For the love of learning
Just for the love of it...

Why would you do any degree otherwise?

Agreed, NS. I really dislike the Tory agenda of judging the 'value' of degrees in terms of the salaries their graduates can command. It will result in courses which provide the next generation of writers, poets, film makers, artists, playwrights and so on being cut, as will courses such as History and Literature.

The Arts are already skewed in favour of those who can afford to manage for years on low pay while they make their names. The last thing we (any of us) need is to have only the voices of the wealthy being heard on TV, either as actors or the people writing the scripts, or making us laugh. It would suit the government, of course, as on the whole it would be their views being promulgated, as was the case before the expansion of education when grammar schools took in working class pupils in the 50s and 60s. Previously we had Oxbridge-educated white men writing and presenting the majority of TV in RP accents, which are not spoken by most people across the UK.

If degrees in subjects such as History and Literature bite the dust, children will stop taking them beyond GCSE, and the population will forget its own culture. Again, it will be the voices of those in power who write the History books, which can't be healthy for society as a whole.

NotSpaghetti

Chardy

If a higher education (uni or a post-18 college qualification) didn't lead to better pay, why would anyone bother?

For the love of learning
Just for the love of it...

Why would you do any degree otherwise?

In our day, to train for certain professions going to uni meant you missed out on 5 or more years of earning. Nowadays you get a bill of £30k or more, and miss out on at least 3 yrs of earning.
But some here don't think that being in a graduate job should mean a bigger salary.