In philosophy Kant would disagree with you with his Categorical Imperative[1]. Rawls also went that way, with the veil of ignorance[2]. The lack of state or context is not only desirable but is the whole foundation on why their theories are rational.

Of course many philosophers disagree and arguably terrible things were done with such mindset[3]. The point I am trying to make is that if you need context then you cannot have a universal rational decision, thus you will be imposing your own morals possibly over others. You might be fine with it, but now you relativized morals.

PS: I highly recommend the Great Lectures on Audible on philosophy. Specifically "Why Evil Exists" and "The Modern Political Tradition: Hobbes to Habermas".

The first one is more on the religious part, but provides great background on moral and ethical thought starting with the Gilgamesh all the way to XX century psychology.

The second is a great over view of western thought, with philosophical counter arguments on thinkers I never heard of, but which i find essential to help form one's thought on how Western society must progress. That book changed my life due to the sheer exposure of captivating ideas even sometimes conflicting. I loved Rawls but consider myself a freedom guy. Now my thought is clearer: How can we find a way to measure that further distribution would harm the most disadvantaged? This is still open but a more practical question, that i can use on evaluating certain concrete policies. Example:

In Portugal the minimum wage has been increased to the point it matches the average salary. A person who did not train to specialize and works in a coffee shop earns similarly to an engineer that spent his first 24 years studying. This is harmful because without differences in rewards, higher difficulty but needed professions will not have enough practitioners. Therefore society as a whole will suffer because it lacks trained specialists to improve the untrained coffee worker's life. "Bam, simple as that". It soothes me in the face of the torrent of events and ideologies pushed upon me all the time.

[1] "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#Eichmann

I think it’s certainly a myth that an engineer’s profession is “inherently harder” than a coffee brewers.

In my opinion, people who would like to study engineering would do so not so because of what they are paid (the situation today), but because of their genuine interest.

On further reflection, it seems ludicrous to believe that that hardest professions are the most paid. The average CS job pays obscenely well, but is relatively trivial. Primary healthcare providers, essential services workers and so on are severely underpaid.

Is an engineer's profession harder than tying your shoes?

I understand the willingness to not discredit someone's hard work, but some skills are legitimately more complex than others.

It’s not a myth for those that have to study 16 hours a day to understand all the intricacies of building structures with safety factors. The integrated corpus of engineering knowledge is just far greater than that of coffee brewing.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the hardest professions are the most paid.

I specifically mentioned training because I knew this answer would come, and like clockwork it did.

Training takes time, and often unpaid. A coffee shop worker will immediately get rewarded while the engineer will not. If they will be equally compensated then the engineer is at a disadvantage.

> In my opinion, people who would like to study engineering would do so not so because of what they are paid (the situation today), but because of their genuine interest.

Marx said the same. If the people would be free they would produce out of their heart's desire. As it did not turn out that way the party needed to force the worker's desire into them. Literally to free them by force (freedom by force is another concept in itself :)).

Fair argument but I don’t see why training should inherently be unpaid.

In fact, I don’t see why the ability to have a good standard of living should be predicated on your profession in the first place.

The fact that engineering training is… unpaid as you say seems to put people who cannot afford to not make money for rent, food, etc. at a clear disadvantage. Those already rich (and able to afford unpaid training) would just get richer if they are paid more than an “untrained” worker.

> Fair argument but I don’t see why training should inherently be unpaid.

Because the lack of payment is the trainee's quid-pro-quo. It makes the trainee a counterpart in the training investment. In several countries in Europe to varying degrees and forms, the state pays for the training. It pays the professors, facilities and can even pay scholarships so that a disadvantaged background is not an impediment to such training(tackling the inequality issue you mention). I am not aware of any institution/state paying even a minimum wage up to master level.

Then there is the issue of difficulty, where it is clear that learning to serve a coffee mug requires less effort than learning advanced calculus. If you pay/reward the student engineer the same as the coffee waiter, you will likely still have fewer engineers[1]. Fewer engineers will produce fewer useful infrastructure or wealth to redistribute that the coffee waiter could benefit from. Therefore according to Rawls having them earning the same would be unfair.

> In fact, I don’t see why the ability to have a good standard of living should be predicated on your profession in the first place. It is not. It is predicated on the the value the profession generates.

[1] The reward/base-line ratio feels like the reaction coefficient, where you use a higher reward to make an unlikely reaction become possible :)

PS: It took me a good while and rewrites to come up with a satisfactory answer. Thanks for the comment.

I don't see how minimum wage is the problem. Engineers aren't better compensated in other markets because of low minimum wages but because they are expected to deliver more value. The Internet tells me that the minimum wages in Portugal is 823€ a month. That isn't a lot compared to many other markets. Sounds more like a productivity problem. Or that someone else is capturing much of the value.

High minimum and median salaries are usually good for engineers as it requires more productive companies which requires more engineers. When workers are cheap few wants to pay for expensive systems.

How can the minimum be increased to match the average without making it mathematically impossible for there to be no salaries above the average?

Of course not exactly but if most of the people earn the same minimum, then the average will be close to minimum. There is no cap on max, but with few they do not make a difference.

Isn't the most likely outcome that engineering salaries will go up even higher causing massive inflation?

No, the economy will just become uncompetitive for engineering companies and produce more coffee-shop workers. Given Portugal's economic dependence on tourism is perhaps by design.