Hi all,
Here's a fantastic way to get a sense of incomes in a Western country.

1. Go to this page http://www.ato.gov.au/corporate/content ... P381_12935
2. Open Table 13, presumably part C XLS
3. Select all the cells except for the headers then sort by column E

You will now see the occupations sorted according to mean taxable income, with Surgeons first and Anaesthetists second.

I would be interested to hear all your thoughts. I also will soon write a formula to ascertain which professions are the most generous in Australia, in total, according to their average gifts and donations in dollars!

Very useful data, though presumably it's excluding all the people who trained for those professions and earn $0pa for them. Nonetheless, given the high employment rate for medical staff, it seems as though you've gone into the right profession.

It might also help make the 80K message more palatable to say rather than 'be a banker instead of a doctor', 'maybe be a doctor after all - but not for the reasons you think'.

It also doesn't look at income per hour, which might be very relevant a) to avoid burnout, and b) if you'd otherwise be spending your time on utilitarian causes. From what I've been told anecdotally, psychiatry is very good (compared to the rest of the medical profession) on that score.

Surgeons: 332,794
Anaesthetists: 287,540
Financial Dealers: 244,189

$1AU ~ $1US

It's important to keep in mind that becoming a surgeon or anesthesiologist takes many more years of education than becoming a banker does. Education has three main costs: tuition and fees, forgone earnings, and delayed earnings (discount rate/social rate of return/"haste consideration"). Together, these could easily make up the difference between financial dealers' salaries those of doctors. On the other hand, medical careers seem more accessible than high-paid banking careers—you don't have to have gone to a top school, and there is probably less competition. You do have to be pretty disciplined to do well in school for that long, though.

By the way, those figures presumably include bonuses (a big part of bankers' income) since the column is labeled "Taxable Income."

I agree that it would probably include bonuses, Pat. And good point about the years spent educating, Arepo. Having said that, bankers do tend to need to spend 3-4 years doing their undergraduate degree and then only begin on an intern salary (~$100,000), like doctors (~$50,000), and in the case of finance people, reaching a high career income depends on their career progressing over 5 or more years. At each step of the way, there is a chance of being forced to leave the job because of poor performance. On my estimates:

years to reach >200k income in Finance: ~ 5
years to reach >200k income in Medicine: 13-16 years
chance of failing to >200k income in Finance: ~50%
chance of failing to >200k income in Medicine: 10%, given you have entered medical school.

So it is an interesting point that maybe it is better to be a doctor after all. Especially since a medical education would presumable nurture a greater degree of compassion in you (worth at least a doubling of income) be less threatened by future regulation (specific laws have been passed to reduce CEOs incomes, bankers are widely despised), be more open to the alternative possibility of research (transhumanism, neuroethics, bioethics, study of consciousness) and education...

The main problem with this income survey is that it doesn't specify what better than average finance professionals and doctors earn. I am pretty sure the variance of finance earnings is much greater than the variance of medical earnings. Supposing that one embarked upon the process of career choice knowing you would be better than 90% of the competition in either discipline, then this would be a much harder choice to make. Probably then the finance income would double or triple that of the doctor. Hmm...

RyanCarey wrote:So it is an interesting point that maybe it is better to be a doctor after all.

I think there’s a very strong case for this. Employment rates for medical graduates at the top universities are close to 100%, and as you say that probably dips slower than in other subjects. Employment rates for graduates from subjects relating to finance are much more varied – from memory, economics, maths and and business were mid-80s or lower in the top UK universities.

The potential non-financial benefits of being a doctor aren’t negligible either. Aside from any benefit gained from displacement, you might be able to offer services to people in the EA community beyond those available on their national health scheme, which could potentially make a big difference to them.

As for ‘knowing you’d be better than 90% of the competition in any discipline’ – that’s possibly true, but given the Lake Wobegon effect, something like 50% of potential doctors/financiers would ‘know’ that, so if they all acted on that knowledge, their total net income, judging by the ATO survey, could end up being significantly lower than it would have been had they all just gone into medicine.

That said I don’t agree greater compassion is obviously worth halving incomes – after all, a moderately selfish person and a moderately less selfish person might have a similar income before they hit huge diminishing returns on income:personal happiness, so if hypothetical person A’s salary were twice as high as B’s, B’s comfort threshold would need to be half A’s before he had any chance at all of doing better, and the higher the income, the less relevant that threshold would be. But I don’t think that really applies here.

Presumably there are some options (management?) available for doctors to significantly increase their income above the mean, even if they’re rarer than in banking. And the increased salary from such options will probably draw less competition than it would in a field like banking, since it’s not the reason for many doctors to have gone into their field in the first place.

Why not look at Part A (males) instead of Part C (everyone)? No reason not to use the conditional estimates where appropriate.

I'm not sure if the income-tax reports count all bonuses. From "5 ways to be misled by salary rankings":

In finance, the immense incomes of hedge fund and private equity managers have primarily taken the form of carried interest, treated as return on investment in their funds rather than as a wage. At investment banks in the City of London and Wall Street restricted stock and stock options play a much larger role in compensation for non-executive employees than in most other industries (although of course this does play a substantial role for senior executives and employees in startup-rich industries).

Do you know if investment returns get counted in the statistics that you've shared? In the US, long-term investment returns are not treated the same as ordinary taxable income, but they still might show up in statistics like these.

RyanCarey wrote:Especially since a medical education would presumable nurture a greater degree of compassion in you (worth at least a doubling of income)

I agree with Arepo that this seems a bit strange. The main value of compassion is to prevent you from becoming selfish later. But unless your probability of not becoming selfish would double with the more compassionate career, it can't be worth half the salary, right? (Note: In order for probability of not becoming selfish to double, the probability of becoming selfish initially has to be at least 50%.)

Arepo wrote:I think there’s a very strong case for this. Employment rates for medical graduates at the top universities are close to 100%, and as you say that probably dips slower than in other subjects. Employment rates for graduates from subjects relating to finance are much more varied – from memory, economics, maths and and business were mid-80s or lower in the top UK universities.

Why do you think finance is stereotypically the "money making" profession more than medicine? Is it because finance offers "get rich quick," while doctors take longer? AFAIK, it's only a select group of doctors -- like surgeons, as the report suggests -- that earn the high incomes. Most doctors earn a fair amount less.

Arepo wrote:Presumably there are some options (management?) available for doctors to significantly increase their income above the mean, even if they’re rarer than in banking.

A while ago, I read about doctors becoming investment bankers, especially when they could use pharmaceutical expertise to help assess drug companies. I couldn't find the same article again, but in the process of searching, I found another piece: "Doctors on the waiting list to become bankers." In general, though, I think it's good to avoid paying too much attention to news-type stories like these; the nationwide figures are less likely to be statistical fluctuations. (You can find a news story to support just about any trend you want.)

Alan Dawrst wrote:I agree with Arepo that this seems a bit strange. The main value of compassion is to prevent you from becoming selfish later. But unless your probability of not becoming selfish would double with the more compassionate career, it can't be worth half the salary, right? (Note: In order for probability of not becoming selfish to double, the probability of becoming selfish initially has to be at least 50%.)

I know. I think that Arepo and yourself should adopt a couple of justifiable assumptions, and then you will come around to my position.
1. We are mostly interest in what recommendations to make publicly. Let's take as our example case someone who has taken up membership with 80k hours, but they are not part of the core administration, they are more of a fringe member.
2. On average, this person might donate 2% of their lifetime's income. They could donate 50% (a 25x inrease)

Also consider that a good doctor can save perhaps five more lives than an average doctor per year, five lives per year for a 40 year career would make 200 lives. Current GWWC presentations suggest that giving 10% would save about 500 lives, then this is a significant factor for a better than average doctor.

But given that we seem to be basically reaching the same conclusion, it doesn't seem like there's any point in adding an argument to it that it sounds like you think is epistemologically weak yourself? Aside from that, the idea of modifying one's motivations is a pretty weird idea in itself the the average person, probably at least as much so as the 'moneymaking as ethical career' idea, so I'm not sure what the persuasive advantage of it is going to be.