Tom MacWright

tom@macwright.com

I read You're Paid What You're Worth by Jake Rosenfeld on

Review

If you were to read one book about how wages are set, why different jobs pay differently, and the effect of unions and regulation on wages, this is the one to read. It’s incredibly illuminating and shows a deep understanding and research basis for its different descriptions & prescriptions.

There’s no easy answer to the problems this book describes, though unionization and tax reform would be a good start. The author doesn’t make any lazy generalizations or broad recommendations.

This book picks apart every ideal - performance pay, or uniform pay, or pay transparency, and pulls in enough real-world data to show you how that all turns out, and none of it is all that easy. It’s a good book about an intersection of social and economic behaviors that takes both disciplines seriously.

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