I was reading Ask the Pilot at Salon, and Patrick Smith the writer used his column to defend against criticsm that Pilots are overpaid. I agree. I don’t think Pilots are overpaid. After reading through the comments, it dawned on me, is anyone paid fairly? Teachers? The Police? Doctors? High School Principals?

While I think most people tend to think CEOs and Hedge Fund Managers are overpaid, plenty of people also think that many a doctor is overpaid. I’ve even met a people who think teachers are overpaid. The person you never meet is the person who thinks he or she is overpaid. Talk to most people, and they’re express the feeling that they’re underpaid. Clearly something isn’t right. How is that we feel others are overpaid and yet somehow we’re all underpaid?

The ugly truth of the matter is that people are paid whatever someone else is willing to pay. I say this not because I think people are paid effciently and economically. I believe the job market is less than efficient. There are many jobs by virtue of being very specialized or artificial barriers of entry are compensated very well. In many way’s it’s a false concept to think of what people are paid as having anything to do with fairness. Fairness implies that’s there some objective measure of work. Should people be paid better if they hate their job? Our labor is more akin to a product that’s being sold. For example, I would never pay more than $100 for a watch, but plenty of people pay not just thousands but tens of thousands for watches from the likes or Rolex, Cartier, and Bvlgari.

Ultimately, we all need to escape the trap of thinking that others overpaid. If we truly believe that then we should be doing what they’re doing. Ultimately people work for one of two reasons. 1) because they love what they do 2) to earn money. Ideally our work satisfied both reasons, but if we’re only doing it for the latter it’s best only to worry about what others make in a way that helps us to get there.