The world's funniest economics stories

Chapter 28 Why Female Models Earn More Than Male Models (1)——
workplace economics

1. Why female models earn more than male models - the labor market

I remember someone said that the more in the Great Depression, the greater the sales of lipstick.The reason is that during the economic depression, regardless of other factors, many people will choose to buy lipstick in order to meet the most basic needs while reducing various expenses.

At present, although various economic problems are still emerging, the vitality of the fashion industry has not diminished in the slightest. In 2009, Forbes released the list of the top ten most profitable models of the year.

连续5年收入位居榜首的是巴西超模吉赛尔·邦辰，年收入2500万美元；德国超模海蒂·克鲁姆以1600万美元的年收入位列第二；英国超模凯特·莫斯以850万美元位列第三；阿德里亚娜·莉玛以800万美元进账位列第四；No.5是年收入为600万美元的亚历山大·安布罗休；No.6是荷兰名模杜晨·科洛斯；No.7是俄罗斯名模娜塔莉·沃加诺娃，年收入550万美元；No.8是加拿大著名模特达利亚·沃波伊，年收入450万美元；No.9为年收入为300万美元的澳大利亚模特米兰·可儿；No.10是美国名模卡洛琳·莫非。

If we observe this list carefully, we will find that there is not a single male model on the list.Why do female models earn far more than male models?People fell into deep thinking.

The labor market, also known as the talent market, labor market, labor market, job market, employment market, job market, recruitment market, labor market, etc., refers to the market of labor supply and demand.

In fact, at the end of the above story, the question that makes us think deeply is not difficult to understand.In today's economic and social activities, a large number of labor forces make most enterprises implement a competitive mechanism in selection and appointment.And this kind of competition mechanism makes the wages of employees roughly proportional to the value they create for the employer above the break-even point.In other words, a person's salary is directly proportional to the profit he creates for the boss.The more profits employees create for their bosses, the higher their income.On the contrary, wages are lower.In this way, we can easily understand why the salary income of some professional employees can be millions of dollars per year, while the salary of some professional employees is only a few thousand yuan.Female models earn more than male models, which also follows this principle.

We all know that in the fashion industry, the market and development potential of the women's clothing industry are far greater than those of the men's clothing industry.In this way, the inevitable profits with larger market and development prospects will be more considerable.For makers of women's clothing, it makes sense to spend money on the models who best express the clothing's charm.

We can see tens of thousands of photos of female models in many fashion magazines.In such an environment full of beauties, the magazine has attracted readers' attention very well.The sales of the magazine are good, and the income of the models will naturally be high.

In contrast, the added value of male models appears very bleak.First of all, there are very few men's fashion magazines on the market, and the market size of the men's wear industry has never been as large as that of women's wear.In this way, the income of male models is naturally not as high as that of female models.

In addition, female models can create great profits for manufacturers in the advertisements of cosmetics and skin care products, and in the promotion of clothing and other products.It can be said that in such a market situation, it is difficult for female models, especially well-known female models, to not have a high income.

An employment agency is an agency that introduces employment to the unemployed.Also known as unemployment agency, labor agency.The task is to carry out employment registration, master labor resources, introduce and arrange labor employment, supervise both labor contracts and agreements between laborers and employers, and organize, manage, business technical training and political and ideological education for idle labor.

Employment agencies emerged in the early 20th century.There are two types of Western employment agencies, government-run and private-run.The employment introduction method was initially enacted by the British "Employment Introduction Act". Before 1949, there were servant agencies in China, which were bureaucratic capitalists who exploited unemployed workers in the name of introducing employment.

At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to solve the unemployment problem left over from the past, labor agencies were established under the national labor bureaus, which were gradually abolished after 1958. In 1963, after the State Council issued the "Notice on the Restoration and Establishment of Labor Agencies in Large and Medium-sized Cities in the Nation", this institution was rebuilt again.It was later revoked. In 1978, a labor service company was established, basically having the function of an employment agency.At the present stage, when China's labor and employment problems are relatively prominent and there are a large number of unemployed persons, gradually restoring and developing this organizational structure will have a positive effect on reforming the labor system and rationally arranging labor.

2. Why some companies are willing to pay high wages—efficiency wages
A company that produces telecommunication products relied on a group of like-minded friends to work hard from morning to night in the early days of its business and developed rapidly.A few years later, the number of employees has grown from a dozen to several hundred, and the business income has risen from hundreds of thousands per month to tens of millions per month.However, with the increase of the scale of the enterprise, the leaders of the company obviously feel that everyone's enthusiasm for work is getting lower and lower.

As the leader of the company, in order to be able to manage the hard-won company well, the boss specially participated in some training courses for business managers, and bought many management books for research.Inspired by Konosuke Matsushita, the boss decided to use the method of "high efficiency and high wages" to increase employees' willingness to work and finally achieve the goal of high efficiency.

He thought, now that the company has grown to a certain scale, it should really consider improving the working conditions of employees.The level of wages and benefits has been improved, one is the reward for the work of the company's old employees; the other is the need to attract high-quality talents to join the company.As a result, an action to raise employee wages was launched with great fanfare.

The effect of high salary is really obvious.The company quickly gathered a large number of talented and capable people.With such high morale, the employees of the company work very hard.

Efficiency wages refer to the wages paid by enterprises to employees that are higher than the market average. Such wages can effectively motivate professionals and improve productivity and business performance. Therefore, such high wages are efficiency wages, that is, Under such salary level payment, the relative benefit of labor cost is the highest.Simply put, efficiency wages are an incentive and compensation system that encourages employees to work hard by paying wages that are much higher than the market average by companies or other organizations.Its main role is to attract and retain top talent.

Theoretically, people's exact understanding of efficiency wages is: efficiency wages are the wage level at which the total labor cost is the smallest in terms of unit efficiency, that is, efficiency wages guarantee the lowest total labor costs.Because efficiency wages can relatively increase the personal utility of employees' hard work and loyalty to the enterprise, and increase the cost of employees' laziness, they have dual functions of incentives and constraints.After the adoption of efficiency wages, the motivation of employees to work hard is enhanced, while the motivation of laziness, cheating and other immoral behaviors is reduced, and the probability of employees' immoral behaviors in enterprises tends to decrease, reducing the corresponding monitoring costs.

The adoption of the efficiency wage system helps to solve the difficulty of enterprise monitoring.In the theory of efficiency wages, there is a basic assumption: the efficiency wages of enterprises are used to exchange employees for double work, and the double work of employees is also used to obtain high wages of enterprises.The principle of reciprocity in social relations is the basic condition for efficiency wages to work.

Improve the incentive effect of efficiency wages and promote the healthy development of the labor market. Although there is an unshirkable responsibility for the government, as an enterprise, it must also follow this rule, improve market order, and improve its own efficiency wage incentive system.

工资是指用人单位依据国家有关规定和劳动关系双方的约定，以货币形式支付给员工的劳动报酬。如月薪酬、季度奖、半年奖、年终奖。但依据法律、法规、规章的规定由用人单位承担或者支付给员工的下列费用不属于工资：[1]社会保险费；[2]劳动保护费；[3]福利费；[4]用人单位与员工解除劳动关系时支付的一次性补偿费；[5]计划生育费用；[6]其他不属于工资的费用。 在政治经济学中，工资本质上是劳动力的价值或价格。工资是生产成本的重要部分。

3. Why is it so difficult to divide porridge——efficiency and fairness

I saw such a story in "The Encyclopedia of Stories".

In the era of containers without weighing tools and scales, seven ordinary people lived together.Except for a little normal selfishness, they have no bad intentions.Day by day, the equal and harmonious life makes them feel very happy.However, nothing is perfect in the world. The problem of distributing porridge at meals every day has always been a headache for each of them. They have tried many ways of distributing porridge.

At first, after discussion, the seven people decided to choose one of them to be responsible for distributing the porridge.However, in practice, everyone found that the person who was responsible for distributing the porridge distributed the most porridge for himself every time.They believed that there must be a very reliable person, so they re-elected several times through voting, but every time, there was the most porridge in the bowl of the person who presided over the porridge.

Since it is not enough to ask someone to share the porridge, let everyone take turns to preside over the porridge, one day per person.The result of this decision is that everyone has the opportunity to give themselves more porridge.In this way, the seemingly equal problem of porridge distribution actually has a greater disadvantage-everyone eats the most on the day of porridge distribution in a week, and the other six days have no right to preside over porridge distribution. They can only suffer from hunger.

Then, let's go back to the original state, let the most trusted person be in charge of distributing the porridge, but this time let their team leader take on this important role.The team leader took office immediately.In the first few days, the group leader was still able to insist on fairness and equality, but in the next few days, the number of flattery and courteous people increased, and he, who has always been respected, had some unevenness in the porridge distribution process.

The 7 people who were full of distress returned to the table again and started a discussion.This time, they decided to establish a porridge sub-committee and a supervisory committee, with the aim of forming a perfect supervision and restriction system.After painstaking efforts, fairness was finally achieved, but because the supervisory committee often put forward various proposals, the porridge was cold when the porridge was divided.

Perhaps because of these several attempts, the seven people have accumulated a certain amount of experience to varying degrees. After disbanding the supervisory committee, they decided to carry out a reform in the method of taking turns to distribute porridge.

(End of this chapter)