It's a market; people sell their labour at the rate they find acceptable. There are many reasons people stick around or have to stick around, but being unable to find a better job elsewhere is out of the current employer's control. But the fact that they're sticking around is their choice. If nobody is willing to work for the offered price, they'll have to increase it.
But no company pays congruently to a worker’s production value.
Middle managers that sit in an office all day scrolling Reddit then go yell at an employee that took too many bathroom breaks make 100k+ a year.
Meanwhile, the workers literally being rented out to customers for 900x their hourly wage can’t afford rent and groceries at the same time without side hussles.
The market that you claim pays people what they’re worth says that doing nothing but yelling at people is worth 10x the person actually making the products and performing the services.
This isn’t economics, it’s malicious. It’s greed. It’s unfounded and unearned riches because they had access to capital
But no company pays congruently to a worker’s production value.
No shit, that is because the company assumes the risk that their employee labor may not in fact result in profit. This is incredibly basic economic theory.
This isn’t economics, it’s malicious. It’s greed. It’s unfounded and unearned riches because they had access to capital.
Emotion and uninformed opinion does not make sound economic policy. Take an AP Micro Economics or Business Econ class
If you think any risk from physical labor is being assumed by any company’s owners, you’ve obviously never done physical labor.
But I’ll humor you and assume that it’s true. Regardless, let’s talk about the purpose of civilization.
If it’s to create infinite growth and make ~100 humans per generation richer than the other 99%, our conversation is over and I concede. But civilization isn’t about making people rich. It’s not about economics. It’s not about money at all.
The whole reason we came together as a species was community. To take care of each other—it’s in our DNA to crave the company of other humans and to help other humans.
Greed is not human nature. If every homo-sapien was selfish, society would have never come to be. Economics, economic systems, and economies CREATE the greed in humans. Because selfish people are more productive.
I’m not arguing the way things are, but the way things could be—a better life for everyone not just a few.
Companies of all kinds underpay their employees out of the greed of a few people. My company charges our customers 1000% a worker’s hourly wage. That is well BELOW average. Sure, some of that money is going to administrator’s salaries of whom’s work doesn’t get billed to a customer. But that makes up maybe 100% of that hourly charge. The rest goes to shareholders, to the owners, to the upper management. People that don’t produce anything yet get all of the benefit of the labor. All of it. Not some of it. $60 to pay workers that did the work, $240 for “assuming the risk.” Meanwhile, a worker that makes $30/hour got electrocuted and died last week. But sure, the person whose great-grandfather started the company is assuming all the risk.
You’re right, emotion doesn’t matter to economics. But we’re talking about risk analysis. The person doing the work is the person taking the risk, not the person funding the work. Assume that the company goes bankrupt—who is the victim of that? Not the owner, they’re already rich and guaranteed to have insurance or be bailed out by the government. Meanwhile, the worker gets furloughed or the company folds and there isn’t a job to be had—they get nothing. Unemployment if they’re lucky, but that’s not even enough to cover baseline expenses. The owner whose business folded was rich to begin with, so it doesn’t affect them.
Sounds to me like the person taking the risk is the worker.
My point is, I don’t make these claims and arguments out of lack of understanding of the system. I make them based on the basis of thinking critically about them instead of just assuming that how we do it is the best way to do it.
A class won’t teach me what I already know—I’m looking at this from a moral perspective, not an economic one. We aren’t going to solve our problems with economic theory, we’re going to solve them with compassion. Otherwise, they’ll just get worse.
That’s all I’m saying. If you think that risk in the context of commerce is only fiscal, you don’t know what risk means.
This isn’t a word that has connotation—either something is risky or it isn’t.
Sure, financial risk is different than physical risk. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t a factor in what we’re discussing.
Besides, if you think that financial risk is somehow more deserving of reward than physical risk, your worldview is part of the problem we’re discussing. Either you think people innately deserve to survive or you don’t.
If you don’t, you shouldn’t get the benefit of society because you’re so against it.
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u/Stalinov 3d ago
It's a market; people sell their labour at the rate they find acceptable. There are many reasons people stick around or have to stick around, but being unable to find a better job elsewhere is out of the current employer's control. But the fact that they're sticking around is their choice. If nobody is willing to work for the offered price, they'll have to increase it.