Doctors and UPS drivers

<p><a href="http://acutecareinc.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/doctor_salary1.gif%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://acutecareinc.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/doctor_salary1.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I always did like those brown shorts.</p>

<p>I’ve been saying for a few years that at the end, physicians come out about equal to plumbers in terms of income and hours worked. Good to know that UPS drivers also do about the same. :D</p>

<p>Bang-on, lolly. Nice work.</p>

<p>did anyone bother doing the math? i’m assuming not, otherwise you’d notice how absurd this is. </p>

<p>this graph is saying that a UPS driver working MD-hours would be making an average of 125k a year for the first 12 years and then an average of ~86k for the next 15 years which i’m assuming is because MD hours decrease dramatically then. right off the bat this doesn’t make any sense. while the UPS driver is working “MD-hours” for 4 years, the physician is in college getting hammered and banging loose college chicks (or dudes) and getting 3 months of vacation every year…then for the following four years the physician is in med school not actually “working” and probably not studying for 80 hours a week (except on the rare occasion of exam week). so the physician is then only working those ridiculous “MD-hours” that would net $125k for a UPS driver for four years whereas the UPS driver has been working them for 12! second, this assumes that the MD is making an average of $180k a year for 15 years after residency. that would only be true if the MD was an unambitious general practitioner…usually an ambitious MD, even a general practitioner, can find ways to increase his/her salary on the side or bring in additional income. </p>

<p>i can go on but i’ll leave it at that</p>

<p>well i think college and med school were taken into account because the md does not actually make a net income until about 12 years after high school. and i believe this chart is talking about net income, so if u take an md in a private practice you have to subtract the salaries of the office staff and the rent of the office space and the malpractice insurance, etc. so yes, im sure the md’s income would increase over time , but i think this chart got the gist of things down.</p>

<p>Somewhat tangent to what is discussed on this thread. I wonder whether there is some truth in this: One of my co-workers, who was from Israel just a couple of years ago, told me that doctors (especially young doctors) are not well paid in Israel. Neither are lawyers and accountants. He also mentioned that it is almost in the blood of the people of his ethnic group there to be very eager to enter these three specific professional fields (over there, not in US), which drives up the supply of the supply-demand curve and pulls down their income. He also once mentioned that there is a significant portion of citizens there who are not motivated to defend their own country, and they are there just to receive benefits from the government and their government does not trust the people of that particular ethnic group to defend their country against their hostile neighboring countries any way. Many U.S. companies may use the US permanent residency as a “bait” to help recruiting excellent workers there without paying them high enough salary. (So many like to be engineers as well.)</p>

<p>He tends to enjoy exaggerating things from time to time, and sometimes talks about something not necessarily politically correct just because he is very new in this country. So read what he said with a grain of salt.</p>