[quote]Who provides the greatest benefit to society?[/quote]
That’s not for me to decide. It’s not for anyone to decide, actually. (unless you believe in dictatorship…)
I believe we should let the people who pay for the respective services decide how much benefit they receive from it. And they will pay what they think it’s worth.
(or do you believe the government should set prices?)
[quote]You honestly think these public employees don’t “earn” their money, but *commissioned* salespeople do?[/quote]
I never claimed public employees don’t earn it. Those are your words. I say that many of them are overcompensated relative to market rates.
And do you understand what “commissioned” means? It means that if one doesn’t produce (for any reason, including illness, family emergencies, etc.) one gets paid nothing.
Can you name a single government employee that lives with that extreme risk to their income?
[quote]“Free market”? I don’t think so.[/quote]
Anybody can start with zero training and become a real-estate agent within a month or two. That’s about as free as a labor market gets.
To use the argument that you and BG repeat ad nauseam: “If it’s so good, why don’t you do it?”
You don’t even have to wait for an opening, and don’t have to vest before you start receiving your full, generous, “government subsidized” compensation. Go for it![/quote]
I am not at all an adherent of the “Efficient Market Hypothesis” and believe that such tremendous damage can be done while “the market” catches onto reality, that it can become almost impossible to reverse the damage within a reasonable amount of time. Witness the credit and housing bubbles, for example.
Sometimes, we need rational people to monitor and regulate markets — people with the requisite knowledge and understanding of how things work and who fully understand what the consequences of certain actions will be. Call it what you will…
Yes, one certainly can determine who is more valuable to society. If it affects basic needs, it is the most valuable. If it affects wants, it is less valuable. Within those two categories, things can still be weighted WRT value, but some things can become more subjective at that point.
Regarding the “free market” as it pertains to real estate, we’re not talking about who can enter a particular profession (you do realize that agents have to work under a broker who usually determines how they are compensated, right?). We’re talking about what consumers and/or taxpayers have to pay for these services and whether or not they are overpaying or being taxed more as a result of laws/rules that are designed to prop up housing prices and pay (commissions) for RE professionals.
There is no way you can claim that real estate in the U.S. is a “free market.”
As far as the “risk” involved in commission work…they take that risk because they can make outsized gains when things go well. That is the trade-off. Public sector workers make other trade-offs (risk to life or limb, stress levels, working conditions, etc.).
Personally, I don’t believe in commission-based compensation. It doesn’t reflect the work being done for the money. A realtor can work 100+ hours on a very complicated transaction worth $150K, and receive $7,500. Another realtor can work 20 hours on a relatively simple transaction worth $1.5MM and make $75,000. It makes no sense. I’d much rather pay someone for the actual time and effort they put into a project.
