With everyone seeking post graduate employment these days the question appears: what job will I take? Many students who look to begin their young ambitious careers look for where the money is and how promising their career can be and some look no further than finance. Finance offers excellent opportunity to build a career upon and has a name for making people extremely wealthy so naturally post-grads gravitate towards the industry.
Today many of the best students throughout the country are not going to research cancer or solve america's educational problems but rather take up jobs as traders and brokers in financial firms. Is this the best route for a student of this magnitude As an economist, the author, Sendhill Mellainathan says "As an economist, I look at it this way: Every profession produces both private returns — the fruits of labor that a person enjoys — and social returns — those that society enjoys." Sendhill argues that people from finance are not creating wealth but rather transferring wealth from one person's pockets to their own. A rent seeking individual betters themselves rather than society. I understand that these are vast conclusions but this is also where we find ourselves today. With our brightest minds taking the best paying jobs which typically benefit the individual more than society one can argue that Finance shouldn't be the route. But I strongly believe that taking a job is an extremely personal choice. Most people will be rent seekers.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/upshot/why-a-harvard-professor-has-mixed-feelings-when-students-take-jobs-in-finance.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&abt=0002&abg=1&_r=0
3 comments:
Definitely a different way of looking at the labor market. Most people don't take into account positive or negative externalities from a person entering a certain field, but this author seems to at least approach the idea. Whether it leads to any incentives for graduates to start going into different fields remains to be seen.
Post grads prefer to take up jobs in finance field because of its material incentives. If the material returns for researchers and teachers are higher the labor market would shift toward that direction
I enjoy the holistic view that this author takes on this issue. It is a devastating lost for some innovative, intelligent people to gain material wealth for themselves and not be in a job that overall will impact everyone more. I must say that some people who do gain wealth give back but these innovative people could change the world instead of just changing their bank account.
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