What does the Infograph tell me about America?
1. Professions in Education and Arts are the least remunerative in terms of media pay.
2 In every profession in America gender disparity in median wage-payment prevails .
3. The average of median-pay across professions is c. $ 80k p..a. It is also known that per-capita natural debt of Americans is around $91K . That means except for lawyers and those in high judiciary, all other professions deal with a debt-to-income ratio of 1.13. In stark terms, the average American suffers and has to live with a constant income-deficit of $11,000/.
4. The working age population of America is 210 million. The median national income of America is $80K X 210 million= USD. 17 trillion. The national debt is $33 trillion. On that debt, the US government incurs interest payment daily of $ 1.8 billion or c. $ 650 billion p.a. The per-capita interest-burden thus works out to $3100/-. Therefore , out of the personal income-deficit of $11,000/- which every average hardworking, tax-paying American must deal with , more than 30% of it , or $3100/-, has been imposed on him actually by his government. Well… that’s democracy, isn’t it? Individual pain for common good ?
5. In the above chart, you see the rather confusing array of categories of white-collar professions besides the Legal : Management, Business/Finance, Business/Financial Operations, Management Business Science and Arts … ! All that dodgy name-tweaking for white-collar professions leaves you bewildered. It makes you want to doubt how many in America truly earn an honest wage for an honest days’s work really…
6. As the Infograph shows us, the median income of the legal profession in America is by far the most lucrative of all , standing head and shoulders above every other . America can be imagined to be a nation perennially and chronically sub judice. Americans are a litigious people and tort-junkies. It explains why lawyers’ median incomes must be one and half times that of the average citizen. Dura Lex, sed Lex ! “The law is hard, but it is the law.” It also explains why America tops the world in ranking for the highest number of people incarcerated in prisons.
7. There has got to be a plausible reason why Lawyers in America earn 150% more than any other professional in that country. And I think it’s plain and simple : Aggregate Demand. Employment of lawyers in America is projected to grow 8 percent from 2022 to 2032, faster than the average for all occupations. About 39,100 openings for lawyers are projected each year, on average, over the decade.
8. And finally , the question: why such high aggregate demand for lawyers and judges in America? That’s because neither AI nor Robots are ever going to replace them . They’ll make sure of that by simply engendering the enactment of ever more laws and statutes in society and keep ever expanding the legal domain through legislation , innovation and constitutional ingenuity. The market-size of the legal profession neither in America nor anywhere in the world cannot and will not shrink so long as Democracy thrives.
As a recent Forbes article that I read once reminded us: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/05/25/will-ai-replace-lawyers/
“Then there is the question of liability. Who is responsible when the robo-lawyer gives disastrous advice? When you buy a legal service, you also buy insurance. You want the guarantee that someone is accountable for the advice they give.
In reality, the rise of artificial intelligence could become a goldmine for lawyers: all these new liability issues, unsolved copyright cases and complicated compliance regimes.
It was the same story with the internet. It took work from lawyers. People were able to find legal information online, get free copies of contract templates and solve a lot of simple tasks themselves using legal tech software. But the internet gave back tenfold with new practice areas such as privacy and IT law.”
So, let’s all of us in the world who look up to America as the leader of the Free World accept what Americans face as stark reality of life: Democracy is indeed Freedom; and freedom is tyranny of the lawyers.
Sudarshan Madabushi