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This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.Subscribe
This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.
Wow. Normally I’m pretty thick-skinned and see the humor in everything… but as a former insurance adjuster (and now a manager of a TEAM of adjusters) who always prided myself on finding ways to help people, I was really surprised to see this one…
Especially since the salary for an insurance adjuster is typically only slightly more than half the salary for a midwife.
I know. I know. It’s comedy. Let it go.
I’ve always liked insurance adjusters as protagonists.
I didn’t realize midwives were that well paid. Intersante.
And David, I can see your point I suppose. You must admit that the zeitgeist is firmly against your profession these days, however.
Insurance execs, yes. But most insurance adjusters are paid a percentage of what they find for the insured, which means most will actually dig around to find things that need to be fixed.
Big overestimation in the actual salary of Midwives (adjusters too probably, but I have less experience there). Nobody goes into Midwifery to get rich. They are usually self employed small practices working with poor clients. Also, most midwives are female (re: yesterday’s card)
I guess in the sense that they get paid more than altruists who are paid nothing, the card is fine. After allthere is no scale on the salary axis. But you see a datapoint at full scale you expect it to represent somewhere near the maximum of possible values.
Still, a cute blog and neat way to try to demonstrate ideas visually. Glad I found it.
I’m going on a Habitat build Saturday. C needs to be below the line. I’m bringing the Gatoraid.
Well, since the card doesn’t say anything about the actual salary (just states “salary vs. people helped out”) a midwife could earn $2 while an insurance adjuster earned $200 (while the good samaritan loses money) and they’d still be in the same positions on the graph if the midwife’d helped loads’n'loads more people than the insurance adjuster.
The graph doesn’t say midwives are well paid, just that what they are paid is 1:1 proportional to the numbers of babies delivered.
Instead of a dot, there should’ve been a horizontal line drawn for insurance adjusters because they receive the same wage regardless of whether they help people. For midwives, there should’ve been a line drawn from the origin, since they have perfect wage elasticity. Good Samaritans should have a vertical line, showing that they help a lot of people regardless of their wages.
and yes, the vertical line could extend further down into the negative. but sometimes their kindness is repaid, so there’s nothing wrong with it being in the positive
Socrates the midwife would not have agreed.
UH OH! Is that some double entendre?!?
I agree completely with Jen’s idea!
And Jace — where on earth did you get the idea that insurance adjusters are paid a percentage? I’ve never seen that. We’re straight salary, and not a particularly good one at that.
Grant — yeah, I know, which is why I’m trying to just grin and appreciate the humor. Like I said, I’m normally capable of seeing the humor in anything. Probably just sensitive because of the number of calls this week in which people were accusing me of not helping them when my hands were tied by Dept of Insurance regulations and their policies. It wasn’t that I was choosing to “not help” — it was that I was choosing not to break the law to give them money they weren’t eligible to receive. I hate that part of my job.
I did a bit more research on the pay of midwives. I found out that the pay I was familiar with only refers to certified medical nurse-level midwives as opposed to the somewhat more “holistic” sort of approach that is more common… I feel like I’m accidentally bashing midwifery here, which is not my intent.
I also note! Each time a midwife delivers, they are not helping one person; they are helping at least two, usually three! My wife and I went to a midwife for the birth of our son, and I’d not give up the help she’s been to all three of us for anything.
@Chaz: But a midwife is only helping one person *out*. Unless they’re twins or triplets – but, still, only one person out at a time!
Loved that play on words.
@Dharmamama: Well played. Well played, indeed.