It pays to be unusual.

I thought it'd be nice to take a break from philosophy with a short post on economics.

In economic theory, there is a term called compensating wage differential. It's pretty easy to understand. The idea behind it is that all jobs are are equally attractive to workers in the long run because of a difference in wage rate.

Obviously this excludes some major factors. For one, you need a degree, or even an MBA to even be considered for most high-paying jobs in corporate America. So we are taking a narrow view of economics when we are talking about compensating wage differentials. Instead of comparing broad market fields like being a doctor in New York with a drug runner from Colombia, we compare jobs like window washing.

In window washing markets, the compensating wage differential is, for example, the difference in a pay check a sky-scraper window washer receives compared to a ground-level washer. In the long run, the window washer for the Empire State building or the Sears Tower makes considerably more. Obvious, huh?

So here's the point, as I wrote in the title, it pays to be unusual. Think about unusual tastes you might have. A addiction to danger is perhaps the best. If you have no fear of heights, you might find window-washing skyscrapers nets you more money than your current job - even if you have a degree! Robert Hall of Stanford writes,

"One implication of compensating wage differentials is that workers with unusual tastes often have a monetary advantage in the labor markets... ...if you like the frigid winter weather in Alaska, if you like washing windows on the 90th floor, or if you think it would be fun to defend the cigarette industry in the media, you can earn a higher wage by putting your somewhat unusual tastes to work."

~ Hall, Robert. Microeconomics: Principles and Applications. Thomson: South-Western Publishers. 2008. Page 369.

Damn straight. Nonmonetary job characteristics often manifest themselves in big paychecks. If you have seen Thank You For Smoking you know the kind of flexible morals are required for a tobacco lobbyist. I remember reading in National Geographic that oil pipeline maintenance workers in Alaska make upward of $200,000 a Summer (read: four months of work) for even the lowest position. But you need to have balls of steel and a penchant for -60º F weather and tolerate the fact that liquor is strictly forbidden and no one sells alcohol within 1000 miles anyways. Think about that for a Summer job.