My experience with this economy has brought me to wonder what it is that our society thinks when they think of the concept of “earning”.
Clearly, we refer to the instance of an action being performed which results in compensation as “earning”. This leaves out some important elements, if you ask me. How is the amount determined? What are the forces which act upon the determination of recompense? Clearly, it is possible to earn something that you do not receive and to receive something that you do not earn. Therefore, I call into question our society’s widely-held idea that people “get what they deserve” out of life or that if you are not doing well enough in life, that it is because you have not “earned” anything better.
Since money is a social construction, it cannot be created outside of the confines of social acceptance. This means that you cannot go out into nature, break open a rock, and earn any money. Someone has to value this action, then pay you for the value you’ve created. Does this give the payer absolute control over the amount of compensation that is transferred? Clearly not; if so, negotiation would not be a concept for which we had any use at all. However, we also exist in a world in which many people have no power of negotiation, yet are given much less than it could be said they have “earned”. If I work in a kitchen, making $9 an hour, and if the average employee in the kitchen makes the same, simple math will show that the work of the employees totals a certain amount per day, hour, or what-have-you. Of course, the amount of value that their work has earned for the restaurant is much much higher; if it were not, the restaurant would go out of business. It needs a profit.
Enter the corporation, CEO salaries, stockholders, and all of the other drains on the worker. These are people who expect pay without having done any of the work. They are compensated for very little effort. Their labor is highly valued. There are people at the bottom, making less than they have earned, and people at the top, making more than they have earned. Why is this? I submit that it is because all of the people involved in this organization accept that it should be so; they agree to accept their pay and their place in the structure. Yet this is unjust.
Help me out here: Why do people do this? Where is power exercised over people that causes them to accept so much less than they are worth, and surrender it upwards towards people who do relatively little? Do they simply not realize that they have the power to negotiate? Do they accept their place in life? Or are they being coerced on a subtle level?
I do agree that it’s quite cold how people treat the financial failure of others. If someone isn’t making much money and is living in poverty, I don’t think it’s fair to say “Well it’s just so easy, just go get a job,” or “He must have been lazy, that’s why he’s not successful.” Maybe it’s true for the people saying it that, in their lives, it didn’t take that much effort to be successful, it was as easy as just going and getting a job, but to pretend like that’s the case for everybody is naive. There are so many young, capable, brilliant men that have ended up homeless or worse, and not because they made any real significantly bad choices in their lives, but just through bad circumstances and nobody being willing to give them a chance.
I know this because this is me.
Sorry if that’s not what you meant to focus on, I just found that worth talking about myself.
No, that’s sort of the heart of the matter. I’m concerned with what it means to earn, but I’m only concerned because I don’t feel like I have anything to show for what I’ve contributed. I have the same experience as you – no one will give me a chance.
I do want to focus however on what earning means to us. What does it mean to earn? is there a way to quantify it? Is it managed by agreements? If I make you a million dollars and you only pay me 10, have I “earned” 10? Where does the concept of earning come into play? I think it’s a poisonous word.
The amount is determined by either mutual agreement, or acceptance on the part of the one doing the earning…which essentially amounts to an agreement.
The forces which act on the determination of recompense are essentially the same as the forces that act on the cost of anything. Obviously, supply and demand is the biggest factor which is why doctors (in addition to the education) will get paid more than fry jockeys because there’s usually going to be some other High Schooler available to replace a fry jockey, a Neurosurgeon is not so easily replaced.
There are certain factors that will often lead to a person not getting what he or she, “Deserves,” as it were. Amongst these factors, of course, is primarily the Socio-Economic situation in which you were born. That tends to be a major contributor to the outcome of the lives of many individuals as society does have a tendency to replicate itself from that standpoint. People will often take advantage of, “Hands-up,” in life to the extent that the people one knows can get them off to a start with respect to a career. If you know mostly bankers, for example, then you might know someone that will get you started on a career path in the banks. If you are raised in a low-class urban environment and know mostly drug dealers, same thing.
Some people simply have a tougher path to the same result than others, sometimes, but I find the argument that anything is insurmountable disingenuous, at least, in most cases.
The monetary system is a necessity of Economic efficiency, otherwise, you are left exclusively with bartering which is a system in which it is tougher to place an exact value on products and services. Furthermore, I’ll take cash from you, you’ll take cash from John, he’ll take cash from Pete…I might not necessaril;y have any interest in trading you three cases of Dasani water for your hand-woven blanket.
Anyway, the monetary system is almost an evolutionary necessity in terms of the evolution of Economics. If the system were to break down, on a global/nationwide scale, and we ended up, “Back in the wild,” I wouldn’t sell you a case of Dasani for $1,000 in unmarked, non-consecutive five dollar bills! The exchange system would simply deevolve and end up back in its simplest form, which is straight bartering…or just flat-out sharing amongst a civilization.
The payer only has absolute control to the extent that the amount is not regulated, so legally, for example, an employer has to pay the higher or Federal/State Minimum Wage. Within the spectrum of wage law, however, all of the potential employees could simply refuse to be compensated below a certain level for a certain job. For instance, nobody is going to go out and be a coal miner for minimum wage, it’s just not going to happen. The doctor will not go out and be a neurosurgeon for minimum wage…you get led right back into supply and demand again.
I would say, for your restaurant example, if you consider building the restaurant, being legally responsible to pay people, buying all the tables/chairs/fixtures, all of the cooking equipment, all of the cleaning equipment, doing all of the staffing, getting licensed by the State, getting licensed by the County, putting yourself up to code for fire inspection, accounting, advertising, initial investment, food costs, and lighting not, “Having done any of the work,” I guess you’re right. There’s also a little thing called, “Financial risk,” they are taking that the worker is not. This is especially true for a worker who was not immediately previously employed, all he can possibly do is gain where the restauranteur can potentially lose everything!
The people at the bottom (or middle) must make less than they have earned for the establishment or there is no, “Value added.” For example, if I were to pay a Front Desk Clerk $10/hour for an eight-hour shift, but I didn’t want any value for that shift, that would be like me saying, “Sell two rooms and do nothing else the rest of your shift,” and that will equal about $90 which is what the employer has to pay…about…after matching FICA taxes and what not. I would have about six desk clerks per shift if all I wanted them to do was sell two rooms. Every housekeeper could come in for a six-hour shift, clean only two rooms, and just do nothing else for six hours.
You must have value-added from your employees, or there is absolutely no point in having employees. If nothing else, you can also look at it as covering those days when they might not have any value…or not reach the value of what they are being paid. I remember a period of six days last year when we had about three feet of snow, I didn’t rent a single room other than the rooms that were already here before the storm…three of which actually left in the middle of that time…but I was here every day. The hotel didn’t make any money off of my management of it on those days because I didn’t bring any money into the hotel on those days.
This is where we find agreement. I do not think that the present wage scales are fair, and I think workers should generally get paid something closer to what they are bringing into a company, but I still think they should add some value. I disagree that all of the people you mention do relatively little, I would suggest that you may not be fully aware of what a restaurant owner does or does not do, has or has not done, or you would not be speaking in such a way. If you have ever owned a restaurant, please correct me if I am wrong and you, in fact, did, “Relatively little.”
I think that people know they have the power to negotiate, the problem is, so do other people who can negotiate for a lower amount. Supply/Demand, Saturated Labor Markets, it’s very simple, really. If your local McDonald’s wasn’t getting any applicants, and the Manager was having to work 80-hour weeks just to be able to staff the place minimally in order to continue to be open during posted hours, they’d probably pay the next fry jockey to walk in the door $3-$4 more dollars per hour than they usually pay. They’d have to. They’d be bidding for his services against the grocery store, other fast food places, gas stations, etc. In reality, in most cases, every McDonald’s has a stack of thirty or more applications and nearly all of the people to fill one out are unemployed. They all want jobs because minimum wage is more than nothing, whoever goes in there and asks for $3.00 more than the going rate is getting laughed at, as I always say, Simple Economics.
I understand economics, but thank you for taking the time. My point is not why economics works the way it does, but why it has resulted in this dreadful economy. That’s my fault. I should have elaborated.
To clarify: our reality right now is that a huge amount of people cannot make ends meet while others are collecting obscene riches. If you simply plug that reality into the economic system that you described, a principle appears: the negotiation and agreements that are an inherent necessity of the economy are being acted upon in order to benefit the wealthy. The abundance of fry jockeys in the world right now is due to businesses that could have used their more skilled qualities (like me, for example; I have two college degrees but I work at a restaurant) removing jobs in order to benefit their profits. Again, you can attribute this to agreement: no one is bound to employ people they don’t need. Sure. But the money that is saved is kept by the owners, not the workers… Are you seeing the artifical, society-accepted division that I’m talking about yet? The people who have the power to offer agreements are the haves, not the have-nots. When this gets bad, the have-nots unionize, because they realize they’ve lost all of their power. This is something that’s being interrupted all over the world.
So then to refine my question, why do we accept that the haves can wield this power? Why is it that they can make offers for others to accept or reject, but those others are not free to counter-negotiate by banding together? What does “earning” mean in the context of the fact that the amount given is decided by someone who has no motive to give more than is necessary? Does this perspective moot the term “earning” entirely?
Why do we live in a society that accepts that people who have money are the only ones who get to make the offers regarding who gets paid what? Is that what’s at the root of our crisis?
I would say that we accept that the haves wield this power because it is a fundamental fact of the system which we currently have in place that the wealthy also work (and pay) to maintain. Secondly, power begets power, and the poor can’t pay the poor, so I can’t hire you to do something for me for 45K/year, for instance, because I don’t even make 45K/year myself.
I disagree with your assertion, at least, theoretically, that others are not free to counter-negotiate by banding together. The reason why such people are in a position to make the offers is clear, and it is simply because they are the ones doing the paying and it is their goal to find what they need in terms of Human Resources at the lowest possible price. However, counter-negotiation is possible, and this is especially true when one considers the social networking people are now capable of, but it requires a united workforce that is goal-driven and has as few individuals as possible that will stab the collective in the back.
The answer, very simply, is just to quit working. That’s all that the workers would really have to do is quit working and then steal whatever they need. If this were to be done on a massive, collective scale, then there is absolutely no way that the rich, the National Guard, or the Police could police them. It would be a completely hopeless endeavor. They would not even necessarily have to overthrow the Government, just demand higher wages. You could also do this on a smaller-scale (within a specific location, geographically or one physical business) by organizing a walk-out. The only tricky parts are preventing anyone from walking back in and figuring out a way to prevent new people from being hired. The employer will also offer some individuals more money, though less than what is being asked for, for their loyalty and for them to come back and work…so they end up negotiating against themselves and the collective.
Your next question seems to obfuscate the basic nature of an employer/employee relationship. It is true that the employer has no motivation to give more than he absolutely has to to an employee who will satisfy the needs of his company, however, some employees will satisfy the needs more than others. For instance, the employer might pay more to someone who has more experience, and the employer will look at that experience as the ability to bring a greater, “Value-added,” as I was discussing earlier, than someone with less experience. The biggest obfuscation seems to be in your apparent implication that the situation is not a mutual thing. It is true that the employer has no inclination to give more than that which is absolutely necessary, but the employee, at least, theoretically, should have no inclination to take less than what is absolutely necessary. As stated, I’m a hotel manager, and I add a good deal of value. I also work 60-70 hours per week, so you can bet your ass I’m not doing this for minimum wage…even if I’m not rich!
The perspective does not moot the term, “Earning,” because someone can still earn their money. Once again, if you look at the Neurosurgeon, the Median Nuerosurgeon earns $219,770. (1) With this being the case, if I am your regular run-of-the-mill hospital needing a neurosurgeon, I’m not going to offer to pay a Neurosurgeon $3,000,000. Why would a hospital do that? At the same time, if I am the neurosurgeon, I’m not going to accept $25,000/year as a salary. I would say that you, “Earn,” whatever it is that you took an intentional act to get and actually got.
I would say that the root of our crisis is not having a minimum wage that is gauged towards at least 75% of the current Median Household Income, by State, for any full-time job.
Both employers and employees are going to try to do the, “Best,” they can within the framework of the Rules (read: laws) and sometimes outside of that framework. For example, some employers will try to get away with paying less than minimum wage and some employees will lie on resumes. In any case, the majority of people play largely within the Rules, I would suggest. You’re very simply not going to be able to do anything to encourage people to intentionally do worse than the best that they can do within the Rules and within a certain situation. For employers, that means paying as little as you reasonably can for the type of employee you want. For employees, that means making as much as you reasonably can for the work that you are having to do.
The root of the crisis is, particularly with minimum wage, the Rules are skewed against the wage-earners. Most employers will not do something about this independently, nor do they have any reason (financially) to do so, nor would I argue that they have any sort of obligation to do so. The only thing that anyone can do to effectuate a change in this balance between employer and employee is to find a way to change the Rules. That’s what Unions were designed to do, just on a smaller scale than on the level of an entire country.
Listen to James W. Walker, not pavlovianmodel148. Mister Walker is smarter and actually knows what he’s talking about. Pav just wrote a bunch of fluff, a bunch of corporate propaganda to trick you.
It’s like this. “Earn” means that you suck the cock of your employer. And in return, you receive a slave-wage that affords you bread and water, IF you are lucky. Can you afford healthcare? No. But why would we pay the healthcare of slaves?? We don’t care if slaves live or die. So you start with a minimum slave-wage. Now if you suck long and hard enough, and really suck all the juice out of your master’s stick, like get PRACTICE with. Have you ever sucked on a lollipop or popcicle? You’ve gotta really give it a go, be forceful if necessary. Because this is the only way you’re going to move “up” in life. Basically the more humble, stupid, low, and humiliated you are, you can move up a step.
And you can suck another cock, the next guy up. You can move up a step.
And you can suck another cock, the next guy up. You can move up a step.
This is you moving “up” the ladder of life. You’re supposed to lie. The whole system is a house of cards, a deck of lies. You don’t want to really speak the truth, ever. The truth is really, really bad. You don’t want to do what I’m doing, TRUST ME ON THAT. Nobody wants truth. People will hate cocksuckers and corporate stooges, but what the slaves and slave-masters both agree on…is hating truth. Nobody wants to admit it. Nobody wants to admit this “government” and “system” we’ve created, this “society”. But this is what it means to “earn your keep” in society. You’ve got to suck, long, hard, until you run out of breath. You’ve got to gag and vomit your way up.
That is what it means “to earn”.
Now this may not seem ideal for you. What kind of life were we all born into, that THIS is the extent of it, as I’ve presented? Isn’t there some great alternative, you ask yourself while sweating yourself to sleep at night, like me??? Well, there’s not. The only alternative is to lie, cheat, steal, and kill your way up. But this is more risky. And if you get caught going against “the government”, then you become branded a criminal and will do your “payback sucking” in prison. Or worse, you’ll be a terrorist, and tortured to death. That will also include some sucking.
Maybe the only person who doesn’t “suck” in life, then, is the criminal who is never caught…
Apart from unionisation being illegal in some places?
I can’t remember whether it was Marx or Proudhon who first pointed out the fundamental inequality of bargaining here - if the employer doesn’t find an employee, his profits are down, while if the employee doesn’t work, he and his family starve/freeze. Of course, welfare ameliorates that a little, but it’s rare for it to be in the employees’ favour.
From whom? If everyone’s on strike, the food rots in the silos, the power stations close down, the oil stays in the ground. What is needed is an alternative infrastructure (as happened in the Spanish civil war, and since then in Latin America although I forget where) working instead of the state system - but as the world becomes more globalised, each country becomes more internationally dependent and the situation presents more difficulties.
The principal purpose of a general strike is to communicate dissatisfaction and bring the issues to everyone’s attention, not to hamstring the government by cutting off supplies. Industrial societies generally see inequality gradually increasing and becoming entrenched and have a violent revolution, or see similar countries having violent revolutions and push through social reforms.
I think one of the most significant roots of the crisis is the massive shift towards deregulation (beyond the ability of human understanding/prediction/control) and short-termism (shareholder value) of the last 30 years. But that’s as big a guess as anyone else is making, no-one really understands the world economy and all its switches.
In any case, periodic boom-and-bust is a feature of capitalism, always has been. Regulation can put some damping in the system - so the booms and busts are smaller - but there will always be recessions and bubbles. On the other hand, state control has (at least, to date) often led to surplus/drought in commodities - and then people starve. Economies on current national scales are too complex to be planned by a central office, by all evidence.
Sucking the long dick of business owners, government, and the aristocracy.
Do not forget that if you do not play along with their game or directed theatrical scripted reality they will ass rape you into oblivion. They are “God’s” chosen ones doing “God’s” work. Remember to always know your place in the uphill pile of shit that is society.
Nonconformance or noncompliance will not be tolerated.
Think of it as this way. The wealthy and powerful already own the entire world where the desperate poverty ridden miserable fucks also known as the workers must “earn” their existence as subjects under someone elses dominion.
You have to “earn” your upkeep as a subject to live in “their” world which they claim ownership of.
This is what it is like being a modern slave or serf being at full disposal of the owners and users/abusers/takers as I like to call them.
The only way to gain any semblance of independence if your lucky enough to do so is to become a valued specialist where your appraised as being useful to the owners that hold global hegemony everywhere. If you can achieve that you will become a highly praised lapdog or maybe even a owner yourself where the whole cruel decadent human orgy just repeats itself all over again as it always does.
The CEO, stockholders, etc… do make more… sure not all CEO’s, stockholders have earned their fortunes… but I think its fair to say that the vast majority of them either earned it from hard work or are intelligent enough to maintain/grow their fortunes considering the surplus they started with (lets say average intelligence is required for this).
Lets, for a second, assume that currency actually does translate to a representation of a physical good. If you own a company that makes sliced bread, and me, being rich for (insert reason here) owns $5 billion in knives and ovens… It would make sense for both of us to say “here, i’ll invest (let you borrow) $1 billion worth of my knives and ovens, for 5% of my investment in profits annually”. Now i’ve got 5 billion in knives (4 billion immediately), and a constant supply of bread
now from the employee perspective… it may seem unjust… and in some ways it is… but on the offchance I actually did all of my homework as a child, got a job at age 10 as a paperboy, learned about investing and capital venture in my teens, graduated early from college, started/worked my way up in a company, and made billions of dollars… is it fair to just ‘take’ the money?
to me, the OP implies that, all the people who could only figure out how to ‘cut bread’ , because they don’t make as much money, should use their knives and ‘revolt’ against the shareholder. sure, thats one way to get what you want… perhaps that’s all the CEO did… he was just better at it
i typically don’t assume malevolence when ignorance will suffice… and ignorance suffices. People just simply don’t know how to make a boatload of money… and that’s always the way it will be… someone will have more than someone else
this is the best i can do think of though, i’m not rich… i’m obviously on the ignorant side
A socialist view includes a solution along socialist lines. One can, however, notice in justice in similar ways that a socialist or communist would, without assuming that a socialist system would be the answer.
If hard work is the issue, they have simply joined the club of a mass of other people who earn hysterically less money. Growing their surplus is a luxury many do not have.
There are really two different types of Unionisation, if you think about it. There’s per se unionisation which involves Labor Agreements, Union Dues, Contracts and everything else and there’s de facto unionisation which just involves a specific workforce saying, “We’re not dealing with this.” I doubt if there’s anything illegal about a certain workforce simply not showing up for work on a given day, even if such were orchestrated in some way.
For example, when I supervised at this telemarketing place…which shall remain unnamed…there were considerable problems with the auto-dialer (company-wide) that kept causing it to crash at certian intervals. There is a program which the agents were, “Rolled,” into by which you are logging time (i.e. getting paid) but you are not making any calls and all of the agents would roll into this program while the dialer was being worked on.
In any case, the company would have to pay for breaks, but it did not have to pay for lunches, so the company got the idea that, while these problems were occurring on the second day, that they ended up having four unpaid half-hour lunches within an eight-hour shift, thus, those lunches were not paid. I thought it was a bullshit idea. What ended up happening was the agents lived with that the first day it happened, grumbled about it the second day, and by the third day they orchestrated it to the extent that almost nobody showed up for work.
We would usually have about 120 agents per shift and by the time the third day came that they were doing this bullshit, only twenty agents showed up and the rest of them all just called in to see if the dialer was working properly. They were lied to, and when they came in the same thing happened. The next day they sent in one representative of sorts, and the company still never figured out who it was, that would let them know whether or not the dialer was working properly.
Ultimately, the company realized that they were actually losing money on only having twenty people there because they could only call on one program and the dialer was still experiencing the problems. They were better off only sending the agents out for one lunch but being fully staffed when the dialer was working. The dialer was eventually fixed, but needless to say, whenever there were dialer problems in the future the agents were sent for the half-hour lunch immediately, but there was only one unpaid lunch. The agents were just rolled into the program that didn’t produce anything but logged their hours the rest of the time.
I’m not sure who pointed that out first, either. It is an unassailable point, but it should be mentioned that the quality of life and business goes down for the employer, as well, if the employer does not have any employees working for him. That returns us to the fundamental fact that the goal everyone has is simply to make as much money as possible.
I don’t think it would take that long for the employers to capitulate to demands more favorable to the workers before we had to worry about the food rotting and everything else. The employers are losing money, too. It would seem that if the employers were not in a position where they HAVE to treat the workers at least somewhat fairly, then everyone would make minimum wage. The employers also want to maintain or better their standard of living, and that’s why you have competition, on the other hand, that also drives wages up. It’s really a question of what percentage the employers want to give the employee of the, “Value-added,” by the employee, and how much value they believe the employee will add, which is why some places pay more than others. There are hotels out there that wouldn’t pay me 75% of what I presently make, and there are hotels, I’m sure, that would pay the same or more than what I make.
That could very well be the case. It certainly doesn’t benefit the employers if the MUST provide every full-time employee a wage sufficient to comfortably support a family. My point is that I don’t think a janitor gets pissed off (excuse my language) because he doesn’t make $100,000/year, I think he gets pissed off during those winter months when he has to choose between taking out a personal loan, not eating or not paying the heating bill.
You’re absolutely right about that. I think that State Control of the Economic system would have a good chance of success in an Isolationist U.S.A. simply because of our superior natural reosurces compared to many other countries. In order to provide the basics of comfortable living to its citizens, the U.S.A. (and there are other countries) really doesn’t have to import much of anything.
I think Economies are too complex to be Micro-Managed by a Central Office, but I think a CO can Macro-Manage the Economies in terms of policy and pass the Micro-Management on too smaller offices which would be State/County/Municipal depending on the specific in question. Minimum wage, for instance, is a policy instituted by the Federal Government (with exception to States having a higher minimum wage) but the Feds don’t have to go into every single business every single week to make sure every employee is getting at least Federal Minimum Wage.
There are other things that can be ‘earned’–respect, loyalty, a good (or bad) rep. I know that wasn’t what you meant by your OP–but it gave me an intro line.
Going to your second paragraph. Corporate CEOs are hired by the Boards of Directors of those corps, who, btw, also earn gimongous salaries. The boards, and all the levels of management under the CEO. are interested in growth and profit–with concern about the shareholders as a real, but secondary, concern. The government is supposed to regulate the percentage of profit that go into the various costs, but, as was shown with profits in the banking industry, it doesn’t–or it wasn’t allowed to do so. This means the only people concerned with the hourly workers and the lower paid salaried ‘professionals’ are themselves, either through unions or professional associations.
I think the coercion comes from the belief in prestige and hierarchy. You say you have 2 degrees (I’m assuming that means a Bachelor’s and a Master’s) but you didn’t say what you studied, where you studied, or what your grades were. If you studied history at a little known university and you apply for a job in the finance department of a middle-sized company, have you matched your talents to the company’s needs? Even if you do match your talents with the company’s needs, but your GPA was a 2.5 overall, how will you stack up against equally degreed applicants with higher GPAs?
There are all sorts of criteria taken into consideration when hiring into a salaried position–including how well you ‘fit’ into the group. Silly as it may sound, it’s all of importance to the overall profitability of a company.
I think the prepaid income and outstanding income is the concept to earn something that you do not receive and to receive something that you do not earn.I think there is no specific word that is concerned with earning.Because some things you earn that have no physical value like goodwill etc.
I’d like to point out that in addition to the contractual notions of earning discussed so far in the thread, there’s also a sort of natural earning as an idea, most popularly put forward by Locke. The idea is that if you till some soil, plant a seed, water it, pull weeds, scare off the deer, prune rotten branches, and in general do what needs to be done to grow an apple tree, you earned yourself some apples, completely independant of what powers-that-be declare apples are worth.
Any liberal (by which I mean not-libertarian) notion of labor is going to employ this idea at least a little bit if it has a concept that a person’s work is potentially worth more than they are being compensated for. For example, the OP talks about people accepting less than they ‘are worth’, so he must have some concept of earning beyond “Whatever two people agree on”. Of course the libertarian can push back and say that people have the freedom to accept less than their time is worth in order to be competitive.
