You can take advantage of people when they’re in dire straits. That’s not indicative of some greater truth about the price of labor but a fact of exploitation.
Just because they would be better off with it doesn’t mean it’s not exploitative. The problem is the lack of non exploitative alternatives. You can argue a life of exploitation is better than starving to death but I’d say even that is up for debate.
No. This is a blatant lie that keeps being repeated without thought.
The reason people work at amazon warehouses is because they don't have other choice. For many there simply are no other jobs that pay or treat you better.
It's not my fault the kids skipping class, having fun and making jokes during teacher's lessons are now paid less than me.
If that's how you think people become poor and desperate, I can only surmise that you've never had anything bad happen to you ever.
Never got sick. Never had a family member hurt. Never been the victim of crime. Never fallen on a wet floor. Never had a house fire. Never had your car break down. You always had plenty of food, plenty of money, plenty of infrastructure near you. Never had to worry about the condition of your home, or whether you'd even have a home tomorrow. Someone else paid for your education, your transportation, your entire life when you were growing up.
Consider yourself blessed. And please never run for office.
Yes, life has hardships, but please do not tell me they are the ones controlling its course and your choices don't matter.
For hardships you can buy insurance with money or time (family, friends, various organisations) but your choices are entirely your responsibility and there is no way to insure yourself against making the wrong ones.
If it really is just a matter of the effort one puts into education, then answer this. If everyone studied with the same exact amount of effort, would we have a world without waitresses, warehouse workers, low wage jobs?
Obviously not. This society relies entirely on the fact that a good portion of the population can be blackmailed into doing the bad jobs, while the other small portion enjoys the fruits.
If nobody could be forced to take shitty jobs, how would most of the current industries exist?
> would we have a world without waitresses, warehouse workers, low wage jobs?
The latter is impossible to answer since "low wage" is relative, much like if everyone had millions of $ for every $ they owned, the currency would simply devalue.
That said, in a nation full of skilled, competent workers, the nation would be more productive overall (more "fruits" to go around), and more competitive abroad - so it's not a zero-sum game in that sense.
> waitresses, warehouse workers
I couldn't care less if waitressing disappeared, I prefer self-serve places; what value is lost?
If no-one wanted to be paid low wages to work in warehouses, either a) warehouse worker wages would go up, or b) an alternative solution would be found, or c) the business is no longer viable and collapses.
> can be blackmailed into doing the bad jobs
and even the people with good jobs probably wouldn't work if they weren't paid. In that sense are they blackmailed too?
> If nobody could be forced to take shitty jobs, how would most of the current industries exist?
By paying more for those jobs, or replacing them.
Alternatively, by those industries not existing.
Do you think most industry cannot exist but for the subsidy of paying low wage
Can you give me an example of a healthy industry were the most critical workers are low paid?
The fewer people interested in taking those "shitty jobs", the more they would get paid. Then the jobs would cease to be shitty.
This is what we should push for, not artificially and undeservedly reward those jobs more and thus trap ever more people into them.
My grandmother was illiterate. That condemned her to a hard life of struggle and hard work. But she stayed on my father's ass to study. My father stayed on my ass and I am staying on my children's. The lesson was so strong, three generations are benefiting.
I fully agree that education is fundamental for everyone to have, but not simply to allow everyone to have a good job. Just because it would make society so much better for everyone.
For this reason I'm also convinced that every single kid should have access to the same high quality education, independently from how much their family pushes them to it.
I'm also convinced that people should have the chance to get back on studies at a later point in life, because it's a delusion to think that every kid will understand the need for education in their teenage years.
You are forgetting defaults and motivations in humans. By default, my kids would spend all day playing Minecraft. They do not have the motivation to do anything else.
I have to stay on their ass and push them to study. I am motivated to do that because I know how crappy low-level jobs are (I had one). Otherwise my default would be to let them do whatever they want. I love them!
A society which removes the motivation for its members to better themselves is a failed society.
You got some reasons. But the picture as a whole is different. Many can't make enough money to take care of their loved ones. Many are not lucky to have a grandma that pushed their dad to study. Also one doesn't need to be burned by fire to know it's dangerous.
Yes and as a society we should increase the number of such "grandmother events", not to remove the very reason mine existed in the first place. A society without competitiveness will fail.
And I don't know a better way to teach most people that fire is dangerous than a controlled burn...
Programmers say things like "By taking the job, you confirm the wage is right." and then wonder why everyone thinks programmers are emotionally cold.
Yes, by pure math and market economics, I guess you might be right. But by hearth, I'm sure even you realize that it's not that black and white in reality.
I follow the first 3 points, but not the latter 2.
1) employee / employer relations are not "human relations"; Actual human relationships involve transactions that are more than just monetary. A corporation offering jobs in a location is not otherwise involved in the economics of that place.
2) "The most effective techniques at causing change involve at least some appeals to emotion or outrage"
What techniques/changes? political?
Plenty techniques involving emotion or outrage are among the least effective too.
Just read the Wikipedia page for the dictator game. It'll fast-forward your understanding. I think this is the extent to which I am willing to tutor. But if you'd like more, I'll do it at $180/hr, email in profile. Should be 10 mins if you don't have further questions, 30 mins if you do.
Not even Wikipedia asserts that the experiment proves anything. And even if it did, the burden is on you to prove that "fairness in human relations" is relevant to this thread.
That's exactly why I said:
employee / employer relations are not "human relations"
Since that's what we are talking about - I'm asking why this is relevant.
But since you responded with smug condescension, it seems like your more interested in implying that I'm stupid (don't understand) and you're clever (I can tutor) than responding in good faith.
It isn't condescension. You're just living under the misapprehension that I am trying to convince you. You're welcome to believe what you want. If you don't think it's worth the money, it's okay if you don't want to pay.
When you have several users all brigading with the same propaganda (on the lines of "you always have a choice, ayn rand is my hero!") as if it was an undeniable truth, I have to face that. It's unavoidable, and not name calling. I precisely wrote about the argument, not the user.
Because you are desperate and need to pay rent and eat. This is how exploitation worked. If everyone was economically free enough, Amazon managers would be laughed all the way to the door.
I don't like that thinking. It ignores radical power imbalances.
If I, or a group I'm a part of, controls the majority of the resources, we get to decide allocation of those resources without regard to any other consideration than what we would part with.
So if you go to an area with high unemployment where the businesses only offer at most $5/hr, you can also offer $5/hr even for jobs critical to your business.
It's got much more to do with supply and demand than power.
Table salt and unskilled labor are both cheap primarily because there's an over-supply relative to demand.
Cleaners (as an example) provide huge value-add, but it's not unique value-add because there's millions of people that are capable of providing that service, and therefore the market rate is low. There's no centralized power that's dictating that cleaners should earn a low wage.
Some reasons for over-supply of unskilled labor in rich countries are globalization (U.S. workers now need to compete with Chinese factory workers for manufacturing) and technology/automation.
This isn't to understate the incredible difficulty of being poor, but let's not misdiagnose what the real reasons are for low wages.
This thinking leads to more poverty and less social mobility.
Factory workers in China get paid less than $5/hour, yet this so-called "exploitation" directly led to a large reduction in poverty[1]. If everyone had accepted your framing and refused to do manufacturing business with China on that basis, the consequence of that would be more poverty and human suffering.
If a person is being paid $4/hour and you come in and offer a $5/hour job, you are making their situation better and you are improving their life.
A wage that just lifted someone out of poverty isn't exploitative by definition, unless we've mangled the definition of exploitation beyond recognition and we're trying to incentivize behavior with our language that literally creates more poverty.
No one is saying it's inherently exploitative. Or at the very least, I'm not. It can be exploitative because if the other jobs in the area are inherently worth $X/hr (because they provide about that value to the company), then you can get away with paying $X/hr in that area even if the job is inherently worth significantly more (because it provides more value to the company).
Despite some weird issues with your post, the problem lies in that companies get to basically engage in a sort of labor arbitrage.
They're paying someone $5/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value. The worker should be entitled to at the very least some of that extra value in the form of wages. Actually, all of it, but you know, get what you can.
That's the issue. There's $5/hr of value being essentially taken by the employer.
And before you come with any "but the business needs to profit", that's already accounted for. We're talking about what the worker provides to the company. The company can impart additional value as well. And that is what the company should be profiting. So if the company's infrastructure and economies of scale allow it to effectively sell the employee's effort at $15/hr, it does get to pocket that $5/hr. That's fair.
But like I said, due to the radical power imbalance, employers often get to engage in labor arbitrage. In which they underpay labor because employees often have no recourse. That doesn't make the labor worth less.
You do realize I made up all of the numbers, right? They're hypothetical numbers to illustrate a point. Because it is really difficult to pinpoint the actual value of labor and whatnot. And I'm not looking to discuss whether any particular job is worth any particular value. So I use a fictional, hypothetical world where I already know the values (because I made them up), to highlight a core point.
Which is why a lot of people want to steer away from the conversation of what labor is worth. Because we may have to admit that companies are short-changing their workers (no matter where they are working).
> $15/hour, then that is the value of the employee to the company.
That's an assertion that I do not grant you. And by definition of the fictional world I created, would not be true. The value they provide is $10/hr.
But let's assume that it is $15/hr for a second. Then, if the company provides no value whatsoever, then why should they get anything?
Why can't the worker just go and sell to whoever the company was selling to and make the money directly?
That reason is the value the company provides. And it is worth something. And I'm completely willing to acknowledge that. Just because something can be sold for $X doesn't mean any single part of the chain to produce that item provided all of the value.
> You do realize I made up all of the numbers, right?
Yes, I realize that.
I figured out the misunderstanding. Your $10/hour figure is net value after wages ($15/hour - $5/hour), whereas I was assuming you meant gross value provided by the employee to the employer. So, at least we're on the same page regarding that now.
> That reason is the value the company provides.
Yeah, exactly. Labor is one of the factors of production. The company puts all the factors together in a way that individuals cannot (due to scale or whatever), and pays labor a rent based on market prices. It also pays land or capital (other factors of production) rents too, based on market prices in the property and corporate bond markets.
Where we depart is on the normative judgement that labor should be paid more of that surplus value creation than what it's currently getting. The fact is that they currently are capturing some of that value creation, and that amount is determined by supply and demand in the labor market. The reason they don't get more is there's a large over-supply of fungible unskilled labor which just isn't that useful. It's like if there's a glut of capital or an over-supply of land (e.g. in a rural area); the rents go down accordingly because the inputs just aren't scarce. To introduce an intentional mispricing in the labor market, which would need to be done by force, will lead to a misallocation of resources. If inequality is a concern, there are less economically damaging policies to consider.
Where we especially depart is on the framing of this as exploitation. This mindset only leads to more human suffering. If you offer someone a job for $X+1/hour when their alternative is $X/hour, you've made their life better off, and we want to incentivize this as much as possible instead of condemning it because $X+1/hour is "too small". It is after-all what pulled China out of poverty, and if we instead had pushed this exploitation narrative, we might not have seen this humanitarian miracle play out.
No, it is not "net value after wages". It is exactly what I said it is. It's the value the employee provides. It is not "net value - wages".
And I'm saying that explicitly, it's not up for debate.
The price of the item is the sum of all the value of all parties have put into the item. $15 is the sum of the values all parties invested. The employee invested $10 worth of value, the employer invested $5. But the employee is only getting compensated for $5 of that value because of a radical power imbalance.
Most of China is still poor.
You seem to be hung on this "better off than before" thing. And while it may be technically true, it's kind of missing the point. Something can be better than nothing and still not fair.
The company rented the employee for $5/hour and got $15/hour revenue as a result.
Gross value = $15/hour
Net value = $15/hour - $5/hour = $10/hour
This is an uncontroversial and standard use of "gross" and "net". Replace "employee" with anything else ("bitcoin mining rig") and you'll see what I mean.
You can define "net value" above to be the same as just plain "value", and that's fine, I believe we're talking about the same thing there.
"because of a radical power imbalance"
No, it's just supply and demand, it has little to do with power.
Table salt is cheap because there's an oversupply of table salt. The same with unskilled labor.
House cleaners are cheap. I'd be happy to pay them $100/hour (that's the amount of subjective value it brings me) but I only need to pay them $20/hour - and that's because of an oversupply of house cleaners. I, as an individual, have no power here. There's no power structure I am exploiting to suppress the wages of house cleaners, in fact the market is very decentralized. Power is not a significant causal factor.
"Most of China is still poor."
Right, but they are much less poor and getting better every day because people ignored the exploitation narrative and went ahead and hired all those people on sub-$5/hour. Hopefully they keep hiring people on sub-$5/hour and continue the great work of lifting even more people out of poverty.
Yes, 15 - 5 happens to be 10. I'm not arguing it isn't. That happens to be a coincidence in this case. Or an artifact that I've chosen increments of 5 to make the numbers.
The employee is paid $5.
What the employee made is sold for $15.
The value of what the employer brings to the table is $5.
So there is $10 of value in what just the employee did. But he's only getting paid for half of that value. The rest is being captured by the employer because the employer can dictate terms.
You're arguing that the radical power imbalance shouldn't be addressed because that that radical power imbalance can be exploited.
And China's income disparity is getting worse. And the rural areas aren't much better off.
Wouldn't it be even better then if they hired people for more than $5/hr?
What's so wrong with paying a fair wage for fair work?
I don't agree with the way you're divvying up the value creation to different stakeholders.
The employee combined with the employer are jointly generating $15/hour, and it's impossible to do attribution from an armchair. We just know that the entire company - the cyborg of labor/execs/machinery/land/IP/relationships/etc - is jointly producing that revenue.
Maybe the employer bought some expensive machinery that the employee relies on, has exclusive and cultivated relationships, rents expensive land, etc.
It's therefore presumptive to assert that the employer is contributing only $5/hour to that entire process. They're contributing $5/hour in wages, plus all the other stuff they bring to the table (machinery etc).
"You're arguing that the radical power imbalance shouldn't be addressed because that that radical power imbalance can be exploited."
I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that the radical power imbalance doesn't even exist, at least insofar as it is causally related to wages.
Unskilled labor is a fungible commodity just like table salt. That is how labor is priced. Supply and demand. Not power. There's no power structure that's dictating that house cleaners only get $20/hour. I hire a house cleaner for $20/hour because there's an over-supply of house cleaners.
"What's so wrong with paying a fair wage for fair work?"
I believe market prices for labor are fair, by definition, in that they reflect actual supply and demand.
If you think power determines prices, I can see why you would come to a different conclusion. But I believe power is causally mostly irrelevant here, which is why I'm at my conclusion.
Added bonus that market prices tends to lead to optimal resource allocation (barring negative externalities).
"And China's income disparity is getting worse."
I'm not trying to argue it's perfect over there. But there's no disputing that China's economic growth over the last 30 years has caused an incredible humanitarian outcome, which is inconsistent with an exploitation narrative.
What you are arguing is that employers should never benefit from employee labour i.e. all profits must be passed on to the employee.
If I pay someone $5/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value, the benefit to the employer is $5/hr.
If I pay someone $10/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value, there is no benefit to the employer.
Why would anyone care to employ anyone for no benefit, beyond charity?
Furthermore, "$X/hr of value" is a little suspect - the $ value of something is only determined after a product or service is sold; and there may be many contributing factors to that sale. Determining what % a given action contributes towards a sale is subjective, and usually resolved in the following manner: "How much would this cost me if I bought from someone else" i.e. determined by the market, the exact thing which would be destroyed by your proposal.
If a product is made by several workers on a production line (and assisted by designers, machine maintainers, sales & marketing etc etc) how do you determine the $ value of each contribution, beyond auction-style competition?
On that point: what is the value of drinking water? If you never drank water you would die, so it is arguably worth a lot - so why pay so little? a lifetime of water keeping you alive is worth thousands of dollars, so why ever pay less that $3 a litre?
Of course, I understand the true aim here: If minimum living wage is $LMW pa then no job should pay less than that.
What complicates this is;
1) people can have multiple jobs to meet $LMW, so maybe an hourly rate should be the standard i.e. if you pay 0.5 $LMV then you should only take half the usual working hours (so people can get a second job) and the job should not be so physically or mentally draining that it would disallow this either.
2) jobs based on commission become tricky as profit is not guaranteed. I suppose you could just pay $LMW and grant commission once you're over some quota. That said, invalidating some of these schemes may be beneficial. Maybe self-funded start-ups should be required to pay themselves a token wage from savings?
3) $LMW will differ by area, QOL is hard to determine and this will require a lot of influence in the market by government. That said, a flat national rate might equalise this; giving benefit to poorer areas, and pushing people out of the areas of concentrated wealth. At the same time, this has negative effects; binding people to poorer areas and pushing them out of concentrations of wealth..
This might not address your concern though, if $LMW is $5/hr, your worker bringing $10/hr of value still won't be paid more.
Final point: lower wages, can bootstrap businesses inter high-paying ones, and careers into higher paying ones (e.g. see low/unpaid internships). Even larger established businesses may be more likely to take a gamble on something if they can initially pay lower wages until the project is profitable. All of this has downside too. It's all a question of shuffling debt - arguably a business owner with no obligation to pay higher wages at a later stage should therefore shoulder all debt from unprofitable stages, and should take on a loan rather than pay lower wages; At the same time, smaller business owners might not have the credit for that; Maybe a better option would be some kind of scheme where lower-paid employees are compensated in company bonds?
If it's underpaid, why do it? If you do it, what makes it "under" paid?
By taking the job, you confirm the wage is right.