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Well done, Nestle


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Less hours? Likely less pay. But at least they have more spare time in which to ponder their poverty.

I meant people in general. It was supposed to free us up as a society to be able to enjoy life more, only work a few hours a day, and get machines or robots to do all the dirty work while we write sonnets and go on picnics.

At its most basic, work is what we must do to cover our fundamental needs; shelter and food. If we weren't working we would be out hunter gathering. In more sophisticated economies, work also buys you leisure time. In less developed economies, the absence of gainful employment does not give workers leisure but more time to scavenge to make up the shortfall from reduced employment to meet those basic needs. Mind you, after a few hours scouring a rubbish dump, I'm sure the average developing national would turn his hand to a sonnet or two while enjoying a picnic with the family.

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Two questions.

 

What IS a 'living wage' anyway?

 

Why should any employer be expected to pay anything beyond the actual, and to some degree the potential value,

that an employee brings to the process of delivering a product to the market?

 

Those two questions then spin off a third. If an employee can't earn enough to meet his requirements why should he not be expected to change his employment, take on another part time job, or reconsider his wants?

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Two questions.

 

What IS a 'living wage' anyway?

 

Why should any employer be expected to pay anything beyond the actual, and to some degree the potential value,

that an employee brings to the process of delivering a product to the market?

 

Those two questions then spin off a third. If an employee can't earn enough to meet his requirements why should he not be expected to change his employment, take on another part time job, or reconsider his wants?

 

"Living wage" is a red herring as far as I'm concerned. Workers should be paid a fair amount -- a fair day's pay for a fair day's work -- rather than a legal minimum or a "living" wage arbitrarily deemed to meet living costs. People shouldn't just be paid the minimum possible to sustain them. That's basically wage slavery.

 

Why, you ask? Because businesses aren't just set up in a bubble. They are part of a society, without which they could not function, and so they have a social responsibility to ensure that they are ethical and moral, and take good care of their workers, because well paid workers spend money in other businesses; and the workers of other businesses, if well paid, can spend money in your business. You need to maintain an equilibrium. A business which sees itself as separate from the society might do okay, but when all the businesses see things this way and exploit workers, the societal context in which businesses thrive will be destroyed in due course. Businesses need to see things from a broader socio-economic context. So do governments, as they also tend to have a myopic, silo-mentality in which they see themselves as separate from the real economy.

 

Your third question is irrelevant. This thread is aimed at employers, not employees. One employee moving to a different employer, assuming there was a better-paying one, doesn't fix the broader socio-economic problem.

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Minimum wages in 1890 were around a farthing. Now it's nearly seven quid. Some people will moan about anything.

 

The minimum wage itself is a red herring. Market prices will automatically rise to absorb it, and continually adjust their pricing to fit the normal distribution. Ergo, the poor will always be poor.

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Minimum wages in 1890 were around a farthing. Now it's nearly seven quid. Some people will moan about anything.

 

The minimum wage itself is a red herring. Market prices will automatically rise to absorb it, and continually adjust their pricing to fit the normal distribution. Ergo, the poor will always be poor.

 

Plantation slaves were better off in 1840 than they were in 1810. Not much of an argument against emancipation, though, is it? Logic does not seem to be one of your strong points. Then again, you are a government shill who thinks 25k for an individual is a poor salary. I guess only rich people are really poor; the poor are just lazy and spend their money on cigarettes. Moron!

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