OT: These are the 25 best-paying jobs in America in 2019, according to US News &

^ I assume many of those probably make bigger $$$ but not necessarily straight-salary and more like bonuses/incentives, etc

^^ and commissions, etc

Not intending to be a Party Pooper, but I've looked at these kinds of lists for decades now. How does a Political Scientist get $112K? We don't know, so the list is of little use.

My point is, what people get depends upon what they actually do, and on who they are doing it for. More determined by this than by what kind of college degrees they have.

Bar tenders, used car salesman, real estate agents, they all can do quite well.

Also, some of these occupations are represented by unions, and so they get overtime. The quintessential was Air Traffic Controller, or it was so.

So when you see something like Anesthesiologist, keep that in mind. I know of Police Officers who get that much.

But not everyone wants to be in that sort of a working situation.

What I always suggest as the alternative kind of thinking in such realms:

amazon.com

Because it is based on actually going out and talking to people, and on finding out what sorts of skills it is that you most enjoy using, and to what ends. You find that very few people who are doing interesting and lucrative things have been following any kind of a prepared path.

Steve Jobs
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Thanks Papi, for coming out here into the parking lot with us,

SJG

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A lot of trades compare favorably with the lower end of those salaries, and the work life balance will be much better than those fields.

^ No construction trades motor trades pay hourly or salary, not very much is commission based .

And people wonder why health care costs are so high.

Human resources mangers, yes sure. But what is a Political Scientist doing to get $112k?

Sure there are examples, all sorts of example of all sorts of things. But my point is that once you understand such, you see that such lists are not really very good for much.

For people who want flexibility and money, I still say that starting your own business is best.

SJG

SJG

"... For this year's ranking, the publication analyzed U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data to determine which 100 jobs are hiring the most. It then looked across industries and measured the overall quality of each role based on seven factors: 10-year growth volume, 10-year growth percentage, median salary, employment rate, future job prospects, stress level and work-life balance ..."

Seems the jobs listed met certain criteria besides just solely being the best-paying

Hey, shouldn't stripper be on that list?
What's the stress level and work-life balance for a stripper?

$100k in California is near poverty

LOL - funny but true

There's an actual job, and a high paying one, called political scientist? I always thought it was just a fluffy major. Before you know it, you'll hear about criminal justices (jurors?)...

the article s out of touch with reality. most people are forced to deal with a fourth of that per household. but white privilege must be nice if you actually have it

If I had to do it all over again I would become an NFL referee. Easier said than done perhaps but a few years ago I heard they make over $250K annually, and it's a part time job. High stress level perhaps but not a bad gig if you can make it happen.

Although you have to work weekends and holidays!

Plenty of whites making do with a fourth of that too... lol!

Very best paying job in America: Wife of Jeff Bezos.

LOL

My 21 year old son will be a 2019 college graduate (undergraduate). He already has a job with a bank that would put him well up on this list (total compensation, not just salary). Numbers and exclusions don't make sense to me.

Founder referenced it as well but keep in mind if you live in SF, LA, NYC or DC your cost of living is higher than most places in the USA.

And IT Manager is all over the place.........there are so many variables it's hard to list them all.

I'd say that most of the exclusions are based on the fact that they started with the "100 jobs are hiring the most" - then picked the top 25 highest paying out of those. The highest paying jobs tend to be the scarcest ones so they won't make the list, for example Jeff Bezos only has the one wife at a time. There may be some trades with opportunities to out-earn the lower end of that scale and lots of hiring, but I suspect they also have a lot of low-earners bringing down the mean. For example I'd not be surprised if a plumber or HVAC tech were to bring in 150K+ but a lot of them are probably struggling to bring home 30k too, depending on their talent level/work ethic/etc.

I don’t see drug dealer on there.

Like Dirk, I was surprised to see:
24. Political Scientist
Mean salary: $112,030
Stress level: Average
Work-life balance: Average

I am surprised that anyone would admit that as their profession.

Just for fun what does a political scientist actually do?

@ twentyfive---a good majority of them go on to law school but working for political campaigns, government jobs, legislative assistants, policy and public analysis, and public relations come to mind.

I make better money giving blow jobs

Like I've said, been reading such lists for decades. People do all sorts of things and take in various amounts of money. But these lists are not useful.

SJG

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Fellas, if you search hard and long enough, you can probably find your job/career on someones top 25 list. I've seen lists for jobs that pay well and have low stress, jobs that pay well without too much training, etc, etc.

I recall bls.gov having listings of career fields. Even there, I could see some data flaws in the field that I worked in. Pass the salt, please......

I know some very wealthy lawyers but I also know a lot who aren't making anywhere near 140K.

^^^^^^ Again, reason why these kinds of lists are not good for much. Some thing applies to all the occupations listed.

SJG

Drug dealing isn't that profitable for most. Say you sell coke, after operating costs you're making like $24 a gram. After cutting it, maybe like $34. Its an expensive drug, and most people want to buy very small amounts, which the risk isn't worth the dealer's time.

The list is bs though, its the high end of the pay scale and doesn't account for location, cost of living etc.

^^^^^ The job titles and college degrees being referred to predict nothing. Not a useful list. Been reading these sorts of lists for decades. They mean nothing.

SJG

If you want a nice career.... you can make a lot doing air conditioning repairs in say Phoenix or Las Vegas. Being a mechanic or doing window repairs in Los Angeles....You don't need college for a decent job. A lot of degrees will harm you, no one wants to hire someone more qualified than themselves... I think good white collar jobs are mostly about nepotism. Most just end up with cubicle jobs....

cubicle jobs?

Been there, done that.

SJG

I think these disparities in wages are just more proof at how much people need a living wage and union representation...

Stockton California did that last year, they wanted to create a threshold no one would fall under so each resident of the city got $500 for almost 2 years.

I don't know the details, it was experimental and they wanted it to jumpstart the economy since the poverty rate was so high. I think its going on til almost the end of this year. Its a good idea

@Icy: "I think these disparities in wages are just more proof at how much people need a living wage and union representation..."

Irony is that poor white men in rural America voted for Trump in large numbers. As if Trump and the Rs have anything to offer them. Instead we had a huge deficit-funded corporate tax cut that went to buy-backs and corporate CEOs -- the top 0.1%. Poor white slob gets nothing except the threat of entitlement cuts to reduce the deficit. R's succeed by playing on white resentment and the bogus threat of brown people coming across the border. And these poor white rural men fall for it.

I think surgeons and anesthesiologist etc deserve large salaries. Pushing them into the middle class is mistake, because we want to encourage the best-and-brightest to become MDs. There are about 8 different proposals that come under the heading of Medicare for all, and the differ radically in implementation. Again, we don't want to push doctors into the middle class.

Would be nice to have a tax structure that encourages more talented people to become research scientists & professors instead of going into finance or law.

I doubt that Universal Basic Income will fly in this country, better that the money be used to fund infrastructure needs, and give people the dignity of earning a living, rather than keep encouraging the nanny state to coddle a lazy entitled, dependent class.

You constantly hear people ranting about the “nanny state” on a site like this. And it’s true that there’s some drag on GDP to help with food stamps and Medicaid and the like. But somehow you never hear about the financial crisis which wiped trillions of dollars out the economy and caused massive grief. We were forced to bail out investment banks where the average salary was something like $600K. That’s what I call a nanny state.

@Random
Not going to argue about that, but you keep forgetting that this Universal Basic Income is just another form of welfare, I never rant about a nanny state, we have many things that we agree on, but this is just another stupid give away, to get votes from idiots. Eventually everything must be paid for, and my feeling is that this is going to be just a red herring, used as a diversion, to get people to look away from serious problems.
This is an example of politicians trying to have it both ways, either we don't have the funds available to effect the infrastructure repairs we desperately need, and we need to raise taxes, or there is more than enough money available for everything, in that case how about returning the excess to those people that paid the taxes. Let's be fair about this, why the fuck should I work hard and give my hard earned money to a bunch of lazy asses to sit around and do nothing worthwhile. I certainly lost quite a bit of money during that financial crises you're referring to, and nobody bailed me out.

@25-

Just trying to put things in perspective. Government outlay on food stamps is about $70B per year, so that 44M people can get $125/month to eat. That's about what most of us spend in 1/2 hour at a strip club. TARP outlay was $700B. The recent tax cut adds $1,000B to the deficit over ten years and benefits just a tiny fraction of the population.

^ Like I said not looking for an argument, mainly it's pointless, it isn't going to happen in mine and probably your lifetimes, and I can't get too worked up about it, my family is taken care of, so if I want to blow $125. a half hour in a titty bar, I'm not going to worry very much.

Universal Basic Income differs from public assistance because it is not needs tested. Everyone gets it, either that our they sign something to credit it to their tax bill.

As it is not needs tested, this means that for the first time the poor are not being pilloried, being targeted for scorn, pity, and contempt, in the political arena.

Now of course while UBI is not needs tested, taxes are means tested. At some level of income, the money will be taxed back. This may or may not be counted by economists are part of the federal budget, or being just a transfer payment, it might be tallied separately.

Nothing would reduce the pressure to create senseless jobs, or expand consumption, and alleviate social problems better than UBI.

Now, for it to have the intended effect, that people could live on that and that alone, there would have to be some other changes. Price controlled or fully state run offerings for the basic essentials, like housing, transportation, food, clothing, medical care, education.

Otherwise the UBI system would just be fattening rentiers. Lots of stuff today does this.

Then other programs would have to be re-evaluted, like min wage, unemployment, food stamps, welfare, etc. Some might be completely replaced by UBI. Others might be integrated into UBI. Still others might still need to run independently.

Keynesianism kept the unemployment rate low for decades. Then JFK saw that it was starting to creep up, to maybe 1%. This was what we call today "frictional unemployment".

But JFK became the proto-Reagan, droping the top tax rate from 90% to 70%

Seems like he accomplished nothing. But LBJ accomplished a great deal with Medicare and his War on Poverty. But his stuff was still too timid and too compromised from the start. And the Clinton Earned Income Tax Credit does also help.

As you move from early industrialization, to advanced industrialization, to an information economy, there is no other choice than a full welfare state. And the only way to do this and protect the poor from scapegoating and to protect the political gains, is to eliminate needs testing. Such is replaced by means testing for progressive taxation.

People who say things like, "It's MY MONEY" or "Why should I support lazy people?", or "We should be promoting entrepreneurism and financial literacy, and gutting regulations, they are not looking the Big Picture, just at their own reactionary little picture.

So it is either UBI, or expect strife, and eventually violent revolution. And if it is this latter, you can know that I will be the one passing out the assault rifles and the bayonets.

Remember, the whole point of industrialization is to create vastly more leisure time by continually whittling down the need for labor. We long ago reached the point where Capitalism is not at all viable.

SJG

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It works in Alaska where everyone gets a check cos of the oil and thats a very conservative state. no reason it cant be everywhere. it may not cover everything but it makes a huge difference.

Its finally that we are making our industrial economy work for people, instead of against us.

And it can be made to cover everything.

SJG