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owencb comments on Another Critique of Effective Altruism - Less Wrong
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Because those one-in-six don't all give generously, we can't conclude whether it's right at the margins for graduates to go into earning to give, even if we grant the assumption about the ratio in an optimal society.
I agree that it's worth looking at a wider spread of career possibilities, but this isn't the argument to use to get there.
I think the stronger point against finance and consulting is that they are very hedonically suboptimal. Or, in plain language: their motivation ratio of intrinsic to extrinsic is so damn low that they burn people out really, really quickly. Even if you're going to donate every penny to $YOUR_FAVORITE_CAUSE, wrecking your health and your psyche within less than a decade to do so is unsustainable and miserable.
Strong evidence: burnout rates in finance and consulting are high, very few students enter university looking to enter those careers, and very few students from sub-elite institutions ever enter them at all (indicating that if you're not being deliberately tempted with a fat salary and bonus check, there's just very little reason to go to finance).