IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v33y2001i2p189-202.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Burnout, chronic fatigue, and prozac in the professions: The iron law of salaries

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Day Haight

    (Economics Department, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403, USA; Tel.: + 1-419-372-8111; fax: + 1-419-372-2875. ahaight@cba.bgsu.edu)

Abstract

In this model of contested exchange, ambitious salaried yuppies (in accounting, consulting, engineering, higher education, investment banking, law, management, marketing, medicine, or other professions) inevitably toil on the verge of depression, much as wage workers once toiled on the verge of starvation. This depression reduces diligence yet maximizes profit, subject to the rejection-rate Laffer curve. Chronic fatigue syndrome provides a status defense (conspicuous excess capacity) for workers denied promotion. Wellness programs, psychological counseling, anti-depressant drugs, exercise, and cheerful human resources management techniques improve profits more than morale. This may constitute exploitation in the sense of Roemer or Steiner.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Day Haight, 2001. "Burnout, chronic fatigue, and prozac in the professions: The iron law of salaries," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 33(2), pages 189-202, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:33:y:2001:i:2:p:189-202
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/33/2/189.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:33:y:2001:i:2:p:189-202. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.