I have to agree with anonymous on this one. The major problem with income discrepency is that some people really are making obscene amounts of money and wasting it on disgusting displays of their wealth -- on private jets, for example. I'm pretty sure no one on this blog has a private jet.
Maybe I have a hard time understanding because I'm one of the ones in the other departments Lucy mentions. When I started in my program, I found out that grad students in chemistry made *twice* what students in English did (the school has since raised our stipends to have less of a discrepency, although one certainly still exists). When I found that out, though, I really wasn't angry at all with the chemistry department, and I really didn't want anything taken away from those grad students so that I could get more money. Instead, I honestly thought it was nice that those students were able to get through school without as much debt, because it doesn't seem like it should have to be as difficult as it is. I was truly happy for those students; I just wished my school valued my contributions as much. I think society *should* value intellectual contributions (across disciplines), and it seems to me that other countries do a better job with this than we do here.
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Posted by Poppy Red to academicsecret at 9/04/2006 06:19:01 PM
