General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why are surgeons paid more than brick layers? [View all]Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Sit down and plan on becoming a surgeon. Write out the plan. The plan starts in high school (grades required, extracurricular activities). Then on to a university and continue the plan. Grades are paramount, if you want to get into med school. Your major in college will be pre-med. (Don't forget to start a tally of the cost involved, whether you pay for it, your parents, or your government.) Then on to med school. Not easy to get in. If you don't get in, make plans to do something else. Otherwise, continue with your education in Med School. (Don't forget to continue the tally of costs. So far you've got about 7 years of post-secondary education, incl. room and board, to count.) Still doing okay? Okay, then. On to your internship and residency. You will be working about 100 hours a week, I think. You will often sleep at the hospital. Maybe you'll be married by now, so you'll have someone to support you. You're still making nothing to little.
After you're through with all that, tally up the costs (hundreds of thousands of dollars), and all the time and effort involved (about 15 years, counting high school, I t hink)...time where you spent thousands of hours and countless sleepless nights studying because you couldn't cruise through anything: you had to get excellent grades.
You've made it! And people wonder why you get paid so much! Seriously! And you can repair a child's cleft palate, and change a life.
Now sit down and plan on becoming a brick layer. First, you should finish high school, but it's not required. Grades don't matter. You get a job as an apprentice working for a brick layer or construction outfit. (No costs to tally yet. But you can start counting the apprentice time as time invested in your vocation.)
Ba-da-bing. You're a brick layer. No, you're not great at it, yet. Still, you're a brick layer. Costs: zero. Time and effort: no more than a lot of other people invest in learning a vocation. Eventually you can lay some beautiful brick. You do not change a life. And some people without any training in the field can lay brick, too, with some basic instructions from the internet.
It comes down to this:
How much in demand is the job, and how many people can/will do it?
Few people can/will want to be a plastic surgeon. (For example, I didn't have the grades, and I didn't have the discipline or drive to go to school & then intern and residency for years. I guess I had enough brains, but I'm not sure about that. So I couldn't have been one, even if I wanted to be.) It is highly in demand. All the time, regardless of the economy. OTOH, a lot of people can/would be a brick layer. It's cyclical in nature, being in demand when construction is high, but not in demand in recessions. I could easily have been a brick layer, if I wanted to, except that I'm of an age that women wouldn't have been hired for that waaaay back when.
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