u/amortized-poultry

Edit: Real quick point of clarification. I live and work in the US, and so these are observations and views about these things within the US.

Hi everyone,

In my day job, I am an accountant, and lately I've been hearing a lot about how we have a big shortage in the talent pool.

I've heard similar things across a number of professions, most prominently in my mind including teachers.

Separately, there are some professions where I feel like I hear a lot about poor or unethical performance. But when you look at the expectations of the job relative to pay, it is easy to make the case that the base salary is drastically low. In my mind, politicians, political appointees and police fit in this category.

The shortage in accounting has already and recently led to a decrease in standards, as many states have reduced the requirement of credit hours to become a CPA from 150 to 120. For jobs where performance is perceived as too low, I think there may have been a similar causal reduction in standards to maintain the levels of the talent pool.

My view is simple: Low pay leads to a smaller talent pool, and a smaller talent pool limits how strict you can reasonably be with performance expectations while still maintaining the level of otherwise qualified personnel that you need. To solve poor performance issues across a profession, you need a larger talent pool, and to grow a larger talent pool, you need to significantly increase compensation, thus increasing the incentive for people to join that particular talent pool.

Now, there is one implication of this that I would like to address: Am I saying that politicians are *underpaid*?

I am saying that if your option is to accept $200K salary by being honest, or a $10M / year salary by being dishonest, the threat of losing your job doesn't really provide a meaningful disincentive to bad behavior. Normal people who might otherwise be qualified for the management, policy and governance work of being a lawmaker are *not* going to be incentivized by a mere $150K-200K on a 2-6 year term, so it will tend to attract those who are in it for power or dishonest gain.

In other words, yes, politicians *are* underpaid relative to the expectations of their job *if* we want to attract politicians who do the job honestly and competently.

Hi everyone, Spanish learner from the US here.

I have a friend whose first language is Spanish. He was born in Puerto Rico. He plays in a recreational softball league.

Recently I attempted to ask him, in Spanish, how his game went the night before, and I used the word "partido". He gave positive feedback about my Spanish used in the question in general, but noted that "partido" felt too formal, where he would probably have used "juego".

I also know that video games are called "videojuegos", and that "juego" typically refers to the *type* of game (baseball vs soccer vs volleyball etc etc) rather than a specific match up. However, I know that the same is true of the word "game" in English, where "match" may be more common in England or with more formal games such as Tennis, but is typically used to refer to specific instances with most games in the US (i.e. Team A vs Team B play *a game* against each other).

Am I thinking correctly about the relationship between the words? If not, where am I erring? If so, are there any significant exceptions to how I'm conceptualizing this?

Mostly just the title. I've been banned under this rule before and wanted to bring attention for any new members of the sub.