Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul D
You would agree that a person who has worked a position at some factory probably is more productive than someone who just entered the job? Yet if the veteran worker and new worker walk it to the same place in some countries they most likely will be paid the same wage when they being the job. So the value of labor isn't real. It's artificially fixed by people who holds all the cards no matter if their production increases with a good work staff or decreases with a poor work staff. I'm sorry but that's not the type of capitalism I think is healthy.
Ill struggle a bit here. Partly because when non economists talk about this stuff you use a bunch of terms that cross and overlap with economic terms, or paths of thought/study that are well trodden.
So bear with me. I think theres two concepts here in what you are saying.
1. The employer has all the power. So they can pay lower wages than they could afford to pay. I.e. the factory becomes super profitable, but they dont oass that through to workers.
2. They pay all workers equally, rather than paying some more or less? In particular, highly productive workers?
Re 1. This isnt always true. In most places, wages go up over time due to competition for workers. This (plus unions) is what lifted the british and american working class out of poverty.
In the philippines. Call centre wages, while still cheap, are going up every year at a fast rate, because any worker can quit with me one day and have a new job down the road on monday.
The counter to that, (and the major cause of flat US wages) is global competition, the more wages go up in one area, the more incentive there is to move to lower cost areas. While this sucks for the current lot of workers, its great for the next lot in the lower cost area.
This process is heavily responsible for a lot of the poverty reduction in the last 30 years.
Im not sure what the alternative is? I would much rather we spend time focusing on political remedies. (Education, health and safety and fire regs, redistributive taxation, contracts and employment courts, etc) that trying to set prices, and im not convinced it would necessarily help.
Re 2. Im not quite sure i understand your objection.
If they pay a flat rate. The most productive workers are underpaid, but the least productive are "over"paid.