jeffd@ficc.ferranti.com (Jeff Daiell) (06/08/90)
In regard to what Julie Harris wrote about the comparitive salaries of nurses and policemen in New Zealand: I'm a big defender of nurses and favor repeal of legislation limiting their scope, etc. But your example ignores one factor: how much easier/harder is it to recruit nurses than police officers? -- Or has the law of supply and demand been repealed there? The same principle can be applied to those jobs in the computer field. It is entirely possible that being a hardware engineer equates to, on some bureaucratically-devised scale, a software engineer, or a programmer, or a tapehanger. But if there are fewer hardware engineers available, is it really wrong to offer more money for that position to recruit them? And, even if it is, is it the government's business to forbid the practice? Jeff Daiell