But what about your life?
What about the life of any person?
How do you calculate its worth?
Actors and performers demand more money based on what their agents/representatives are able to negotiate for them. If they are well known, they can demand more money. The more talented, more wanted, more popular, these too will more money.
It turns out that you, yourself, have to calculate that worth at any particular time in your life and then figure out how to convince others that the amount is accurate. As a young college graduate going out for your first interview, you were just happy to get that first job, probably at any amount someone was willing to pay you. Later, if you found out that someone in the same job, hired at the same time was offered more than you were for the same skills and background and responsibilities, how would you handle that?
What if your boss told you that the other person needed the money more than you did?
What if your boss told you that you were lucky to have the job in the first place, and the reasons he gave you were reasons that had nothing to do with the job you were doing, or the qualities and qualifications you had.
That's what happened to me. Two of us, from the same graduating class, got teaching jobs in the same school. After I found out that he was being paid more than me and I confronted our boss about it, the answer was: Well, he's a man; and a man has more responsibilities than a woman.
If you don't know anyone who lost a job, got paid less, or was not promoted because of being a woman, or a minority, or not pretty enough, or thin enough, or pregnant-yes, I lost a job because I was pregnant and that condition was not acceptable for teachers in that state, at that time-how do you reconcile this fact with your sense of fairness and justice?
Ask yourself, have I ever been discriminated against?
If yes, how did you feel?
What did you do?
