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<p>Which is little more than a tautological throw-away, for that statement can be used to justify anything. Slavery - or, in other words, paying zero wages - infamously used to be justified (and can still be justified) as an outgrowth of the capitalist system. {It was certainly profitable for the slaveowners to own slaves; the edifice of slavery was undermined by moral arguments, not economic arguments.} </p>
<p>Moreover, as purduefrank has argued, justifications based on capitalist/economic arguments suffer from the weakness that they ignore the impact of market failures, particularly with regard to information asymmetries, as well as the inherently socio-political aspect of wage levels. Firms interact in the free market. But individual employees of those firms do not, except via the slowly changing labor market. Rather, the wages that the firm pays to its employees is a purely political process. To explore sallyawp’s point, her company could decide to pay her (and other engineers) twice as much, and pay other employees less, or not even hire them at all. More to the point, engineering companies could pay their engineers more and pay less for management consulting or investment banking services. </p>
<p>As a historical note, Henry Ford famously chose to pay double the prevailing wage to auto workers - $5 a day, which was a princely sum for laborers at the time, and also reduced the workday to 8 hours a day, which was unheard of at the time, and despite grave criticism from the business press that he was paying his workers excessively. Ford’s labor productivity, measured as cost per unit, actually increased, as turnover plummeted. What that shows is that companies do not have take the prevailing wages of the ‘capitalist system’ as ‘a given’: they actively create the capitalist system by setting those wages. Other auto companies were forced to match Ford’s high wages to remain competitive. </p>
<p>The larger political landscape also is ignored. Much of the ‘capitalist’ US economy is actually a product of political decisions. For example, the golden age of modern US engineering was the Space Race when the US poured billions into the development of space technology…for political reasons, not economic reasons. We nevertheless continue to enjoy the fruits of the myriad technological advances fostered by the Space Race - much of Silicon Valley was fostered by the market for advanced electronics for the space program. Much of the growth of Wall Street can be traced to various political decisions such as the choice not to regulate the burgeoning derivatives market, to repeal the law barring commercial banking and investment banking to be housed within the same umbrella organization, and the choice to intervene in the housing market to provide cheaper mortgages to borrowers with lower credit scores. These were not outcomes of an unfettered free market, but rather deliberate political decisions that fostered tremendous growth in the banking industry and resulting vast increases in banking pay. </p>
<p>But I do agree that the labor market does exert its influence, if slowly, and the result is that as long as the system does not pay its engineers as much as other professions do, then more Americans will choose not to become engineers, at least not for long. Like I’ve said on other threads, a large percentage of graduates from schools such as MIT do not actually choose to work as engineers, but rather become consultants or bankers. Even those that do may do so only briefly before opting for other careers, i.e. by heading for business school and then transitioning to banking or consulting, or, as ariesathena did, by heading to law school. </p>
<p>The upshot is that many engineers apparently would rather be consultants, bankers, lawyers, etc. but very few consultants, bankers or lawyers would rather be engineers. </p>
<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.” *</p>
<p>Read more: [Are</a> We Losing Our Edge? - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html#ixzz0mQXVZZIe]Are”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html#ixzz0mQXVZZIe)</p>
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