Do they get paid?

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

With replicators and access to an infinite energy supply, nobody would ever go hungry. Since they can make any amount of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, tools, toys, or whatever else they want I guess money would be used to buy luxuries and/or privileges.

But replicators don't run on nothing. They need matter and energy and that would cost something. I suspect people would need replicator allowances or some such, i.e. a form of currency. I don't buy that energy is just "free" and won't cost anything to produce.

The way I explain away the silly "no money" concept is that A) they don't use hard cash, and B) they are normally not "greedy bastards", whose goal in life is to acquire personal wealth!

[Elessar]

Actually I just recalled that in DS9, Ben Sisko and his dad are talking, and Sisko refers to back when he was in the Academy and how he "used all his transporter credits" getting back home for dinner every night.

Those are probably issued to recruits, or cadets or whatever... as well as officers. But it just shows that a person can't just walk up and use a transporter station.

[justTripn]

Yes, not having a medium of exchange is a BAD idea. I am sure a medium of exchange would evolve naturally in any complex society.

[blacknblue]

Even if you allow for a society where every material need is taken care of, like Trek. (And btw, replicators would run on nothing, since star light would provide infinite supplies of free electricity, and elecricity could be converted into infinite supplies of free matter courtesy of transporter technology.)

You would still need a medium of exchange to establish relative value of services. Like, how much is a Doctor's services worth compared to an Engineer's? Is ten hours of engineering repair work worth five hours of surgery? Who decides how much it costs to send a starship fifty light years to carry a shipment of custom replicated vaccine to colony XYZ, as opposed to sending the same starship 156 lightyears in the other direction to Risa to pick up Ambassador Twinkletoes and haul his purple hocks over to Vulcan for the peace conference?

You gotta have some kind of standard to base things on. Like those transporter credits might not refer to the use of the transporter itself, but rather to the time the transporter operator spent operating the controls. In other words, you would have to pay for the services of the person who provided you with the transportation, like a taxi driver, even if the gas and car and maintenance came free.

[Linda]

I agree that you need some medium of exchange, some way to value and trade services. It would not be true to say that there is no money and all war and poverty have been solved. Maybe things are better, but all problems will never be completely solved. Now where was it they said that all these problems were solved? That TNG episode where they woke those people frozen centuries before? Or was it the First Contact movie? Or both?

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

That TNG episode where they woke those people frozen centuries before?

That was an early TNG episode whose name escpaes me at the moment. I hated it! Picard was so condescending and snotty towards those people. It was like "Oh, I'm so eveolved and you're not"! Bleah!

[CX]

It was the last episode of the first season, The Neutral Zone. And yes, only Data had any interest in humanity's past and the decency to care enough about those people to bring them aboard instead of letting them get used for target practice by the Klingons.

[ginamr]

I've always just assumed 1 credit=1 US Dollar. Don't know what they'd do for change, tho.

As far as actual salaries, here's what I'd guess based on this century's salaries, but don't take it as gold:

Engineer: 80,000-160,000 credits (based on rank)
Tactical/Security: 130,000-170,000 (based on rank)
Science: 90,000-150,000 (based on rank)
Communications: 50,000-86,000 (based on rank)
Medical: 260,000-352,000 (based on rank)
CO/XO: 172,000-190,000 (based on rank and number of years served)
Non-commissioned: 45,000-78,000 (based on rank and specialization)