big bucks!

Big Bucks That is the headline in the Sunday Times in an article asking who are the people in Singapore earning top dollar. 'Last year's income tax assessments showed that, in 2005, $4.29 million was the median pay for the eight top earning lawyers, $3.72 million for accountants, $3.33 million for bankers, $2.7 million for MNC executives, $2.3 million for local manufacturing head honchos and $0.62 million for engineers.' What would be interesting would be the median pay for the top eight civil servants and the top eight politicians. They are somewhere there, probably better than the engineers but how far from the rest is not known. The only figure that I am uncomfortable is the median pay of bankers. There are only 3 local banks and published figures showed that the top 6 got paid more than $5 million. And this did not include the top earners of foreign banks here. The $3.3 million definitely appeared pretty low from my guess. I am just guessing. From the figures given, it seems that the top five lucrative jobs that are paying big bucks are lawyers, accountants, bankers, heads of MNCs or local manufacturing and not forgetting civil servants or politicians. Engineering is out and should be forgotten. A little about comparison. Why lawyers and accountants? These are professionals like doctors and architects or professional gamblers. Their jobs are not in the management of a huge corporation like running a bank or a MNC. The latter two are more similar in nature to running a ministry. Is there any flaw in comparing individual skills or flairs against management skills, the management of large number of people and making decisions that affect a large number of people? I cannot see the rationale from a job evaluation perspective. Logically speaking, all the head honchos should be paid more than the lawyers and accountants as the skills of these professionals only affect a very limited number of people and have lesser widespread consequences. The head honchos should be demanding for higher pay.