Wages and the Lottery

Adam Davidson has an interesting piece about how many low-paying jobs have a sort of lottery component where people are willing to accept low wages for a period of time in the hope that they will end up having a very high-paying job in the future. The best example of this sort of lottery system is probably the motion picture industry in Hollywood, where many people will spend years working in low-paying jobs in the hope that at some point they will make it big as an actor or director.

The...