Larry Summers' "Sacrifice"

Arguably Richard Cohen is just best ignored as readership of the Washington Post oped pages rapidly approaches zero, but it is worth correcting the logic by which he decided that Larry Summers, one of President Obama's top advisers, is making a huge sacrifice by foregoing Wall Street millions. All jobs carry a mix of pleasant and unpleasant aspects. Many people take relatively low-paying jobs, for example school teachers or social workers, because they believe that they are advancing a social purpose that they consider valuable. In other cases, the people who perform the work may not consider it inherently valuable and may actually view it as carrying negative value. For example, a mob hitman would likely fall in this category. It seems reasonable to believe that many, if not most, Wall Street players probably don't attach much intrinsic value to outguessing the market. (Yes, I know how to tell the story that they assist the process of "price discovery." I just don't think anyone believes it.) In this case, the high salary is associated with work that might be inherently distasteful. In this sense, a person's prior salary does not give an accurate measure of the sacrifice they might be incurring to enter government service.

--Dean Baker