1. That was a lot of solid foundation-building and buildup to get to "Nope, the real answer is hierarchical rank. Which is sort of ill-defined, sure, and there's not a lot of good data out there to support it, but, yep, hierarchical rank. Definitely"
2. Isn't hierarchical rank as the author appears to be defining it more of an effect with lots of potential causes than it is a usefully-defining trait in and of itself? It's not really news that people in high-level, high-paying jobs make the most money. This seems about as useful as saying there's a correlation between owning expensive exotic cars and high income. Sure, it's true, but so what?
> It's not really news that people in high-level, high-paying jobs make the most money. This seems about as useful as saying there's a correlation between owning expensive exotic cars and high income. Sure, it's true, but so what?
It looks similar to saying that it's not really news that women make less money than men, so what? The article answers this question by saying that women more often work part-time or make less per hour than men. Why they do that is another matter - but that at least answer the original question. Similarly, that people in high-level jobs make most money explains why they have more money. Why they are in high-level jobs is similarly different question, which, like why women make less per hour than men, could be outside of immediate focus of the article. The article is about pointing to that - perhaps trivial, but maybe still underappreciated - correlation between high position level and compensation.
> That was a lot of solid foundation-building
Author admits that there is not too much research in hierarchical dependencies with income. So at least we have solid foundation (it would perhaps be worse if the foundation would be shaky) and as good as we (author) can have the outcomes.
Your point 2 is spot on. Saying hierarchy affects income the most is bad analysis because hierarchy is obviously highly correlated with income. This would only be news if the author got the opposite result they did.
It would have been way more interesting to see an analysis on what hierarchies are net positive for society (i.e. competence hierarchies) and what hierarchies are net negative (probably coercive hierarchies where there is not enough competition so there is market power being exploited)
1. That was a lot of solid foundation-building and buildup to get to "Nope, the real answer is hierarchical rank. Which is sort of ill-defined, sure, and there's not a lot of good data out there to support it, but, yep, hierarchical rank. Definitely"
2. Isn't hierarchical rank as the author appears to be defining it more of an effect with lots of potential causes than it is a usefully-defining trait in and of itself? It's not really news that people in high-level, high-paying jobs make the most money. This seems about as useful as saying there's a correlation between owning expensive exotic cars and high income. Sure, it's true, but so what?