Recruiters estimate that an oil trader on Wall Street with ten years in the business is likely to earn at least $1 million this year, while a neurosurgeon with similar tenure on the job makes less than $600,000. Likewise, bankers involved with mergers will take home about $2 million after a decade on the job this year, more than ten times what a cancer researcher earns at the same stage in their career. If earning potential reflects a profession’s worth in society, then we as a whole value creating wealth off of beefing up corporations and perpetuating our dependence on fossil fuels more than we value the ability to provide health care for intractable illnesses. Another way to look at it would be that it’s all Wall Street’s fault that there is no cure for cancer. [Bloomberg]
