An employer who has leverage is exploiting you, I never denied that. My point is that it’s leverage that gives people power. If your best skill set is equivalent to a high school student, you have no leverage. You can obtain leverage by obtaining and developing skills, or by creating value. If not, the employer has all the leverage and will use it to exploit you.
Leverage goes both ways. It’s just people like you refuse to see it both ways. You just think employers with all the leverage will pay you more out of the goodness of their heart. No, you as person has to create leverage so that you can demand it.
Curious. Why is our economic system set up in such a way that the people who do most of the hard labour get paid the least those higher up get paid shit tons for nothing. Is there a specific reason or some benefit this?
The people on the top are paid for different things. Somebody has to take the risk of setting up the factory, buying equipment, risk getting sued, etc. rich people are compensated for taking risk, not for doing manual labor. How much risk deserves how much compensation? Is there a world where things work differently? I have no idea and people will argue here for hours but that’s the basic logic it.
I think the point many here are trying to make is that those who have the money and power are earning vast amounts of profits while paying workers below living wages. We as the people should collectively be saying that’s enough, you can have your profits after you pay living wages to all your workers.
The greed of the owner / investor class has gotten out of control. It doesn’t take a scholar to see this. If a position requires a human to dedicate 30-40 hours a week to complete then that human should make enough money to sustain themselves comfortably.
We as the people should collectively be saying that’s enough
The problem is people like you say this instead of doing fuck all about it.
Because you refuse to accept the reality of life that you have to advocate and fight for your meals, whether you like it or not.
The people you cry about who exploit do so. But there are also cool people who are nice who also do so. You guys only look at the “nice” people who passively watch themselves get fucked by the system and don’t do anything to figure out where they actually do have leverage or if they don’t, figure out how to get it.
Sleepwalking thru life crying about the living wage you are owed and yet not actually creating value makes you come across as whiny and entitled, not like someone worth giving a damn about.
Barbers cut more than one head of hair a day, your analogy is irrelevant. I'm not their boss, I'm a customer. It's the barber's job to ensure they make enough to pay themselves a fair wage.
Well you’d still pay for the fee of the haircut cause he provided a service to you lmao, but I sure wouldn’t tip him for doing an unsatisfactory job, haircuts at my barbershop are around 50, and I’ll give him that in a tip so most of the time my haircuts are 90-100
It’s interesting that you’d be willing to exploit his labor for a subjective judgement of their work. If someone put’s in the work, they should be paid a living wage.
$50 post operating expenses is below livable wages.
$50 for 45 minutes worth of work is below livable? So he at that rate he could do 6 haircuts in 6 hours and make $400 not including his tips in a day and you say that’s not livable wages lmao be real, he could make upwards too $800 a day depending on business and how hard he works, 5 days a week shit 4, that’s $1600 in a week that’s $51,200 my guy not amazing but definitely livable lmao
Not sure what your argument is though, I don’t make the price for the haircut? Lol I just have too abide by that price and if I really like the cut I’ll give him some extra, I’m sure he’ll do more haircuts then just me, so why should that bourdon come down on me, I just need a hair cut.
You pay them for the labor of cutting your hair. If you don’t pay them a living wage, you are exploiting them. Regardless, of who set the price, you are either complicit in exploitation or being blind to your own hypocrisy.
You should pay a living wage if you hold true to your standards. Because if you say you can determine if someone’s work is worth a living wage, then you have no ground to say someone else doesn’t.
Bro at I’m a customer not a fucker employer, he runs the business with his wife lmao I wouldn’t have too tell you this whole thing, well cause I have reason too but I’m sure he’s doing fine for himself, been cutting my hair for 15 years + always does great, and has many employees on payroll, I’m sure he makes more then what I said for sure, that’s just in cuts for himself lol and I’m most likely being modest, remember smart guy, the hair cut I get is $50 not every hair cut, and not also including the fact it’s a damn salon as well, you don’t know everything and every situation my guy lmao If he “couldn’t make a living” he would’ve been packed up many years ago and not cutting my hair and many others in such a populated city with a lot of competition
Not a big deal bro, you just didn’t get the grasp of the situation, because I don’t have too explain it all too you but I did anyway, my barber probably makes more money then both us while we argue in a Reddit Thread, good day sir, I have things too do
Those at the bottom will always be paid less than a living wage because that is basically the definition of the bottom. If we were to magically pay everyone at the bottom twice as much, inflation would immediately kick in and they wouldn’t be any better off. Just look at the last five years. The wages on the low end went up dramatically but most people are worse off in general.
Damn if it’s so hard I’ll gladly take the risk and the money that comes with it, and they can live the easy life of a retail worker lol. I’ll trade any day.
That is all luck, and I don’t have the time. And I can’t get a loan. There’s a reason you can predict someone’s financial outcomes later in life simply by knowing facts about their context as a baby (like zip code)
Because it’s basically set in stone from birth plus or minus some luck. But your birth circumstance is an even purer form of luck, so it’s really just an infinite regress.
The guy who wrote the exact paper(s) discussing zip code being the predominant factor determining success literally disagrees with you. Raj Chetty is the Harvard economist who writes a ton of research on this topic. He said verbatim in an interview
“It’s not that students can’t afford college because of the cost, because a lot of colleges have made it quite affordable,” Chetty said. “It’s that they’ve never met anyone who went to college, or went on to found an important business, or become a scientist. … it’s about environment shaping aspirations.”
Another quote: The hyperlocal difference means that moving from a low opportunity area to a high opportunity one—even within the same general radius—can have a dramatic impact on outcomes, in particular, lifetime wages. “The childhood years drive changes and outcomes in the long run. Every extra year of exposure to a better environment, and the earlier you move to that better neighborhood, the better you do.”
Don’t get me wrong, obviously there’s a huge amount of luck involved in terms of the specific environment you’re born into. But you saying it’s set in stone from birth does absolutely nothing to help solve the problem. Research like this shows there’s a ton of things that can be done to help dramatically change outcomes for kids from less privileged backgrounds and comments like “can’t do anything about it, capitalism evil” are virtue signaling garbage that help no one.
On top of that, there’s plenty of entrepreneurs who have lost it all and gotten it back, or have many different successful businesses. That’s a different topic but the idea business isn’t a skill and it’s like playing the lottery is idiotic.
None of those quotes disagree with what I said, I’m just speaking on a more fundamental level than he is. I could agree with all of what you pasted and it wouldn’t really change my view.
There are factors they also didn’t control that led to them doing or not doing those productive things.
You’re skirting too close to the “the solution to murder is for everyone to choose not to murder anyone” logic. Free will is not a coherent concept when applied to broad population wide trends. It provides no basis for analysis. I’d argue free will as a concept is literally paradoxical, but that’s a slightly different convo ig
Exactly... and far too many people buy into the flawed logic that our economy is "zero sum". It really doesn't MATTER how rich somebody else is able to make themselves. Their wealth doesn't mean there's automatically less possible wealth for you to attain because they "have almost all of it already".
It's not like a pie where the super rich cut themselves 7/8ths. of the pie so nobody else can ever earn more than fractions of the 1/8th. left.
The problem has much more to do with people's ability to earn fair pay for the labor they actually do, and the available opportunities to better themselves.
In America, we really gutted out most of our "middle class" when we decided factory work was beneath us and could all be outsourced elsewhere. It simply wasn't true that we had enough good paying work that didn't require the manual labor to make up for it. What we were left with was a glut of fast food restaurants, retailers, call centers and basic service industries to serve as the "replacements" for that labor pool. Then they get angry when that low-value labor doesn't pay what they would have earned assembling new refrigerators or stoves, or ?
Banks and insurers are assuming most of the risk as the rich take out loans.
(edit: This doesn’t even touch corporate umbrellas that can shield a corporate entity from said risk, the bankruptcy game, and the copious amount of government subsidies these “captains of industry” receive.)
Banks and insurers? They may finance small businesses owned by mom and pop, but that’s not how large corporations work.
Investors put seed capital that has potential for total loss of equity. If they manage to go public, they sell equity to market investors or sell corporate bonds for new capital. Both of which has potential for total loss for the investors and bond holders.
Because in a world of finite resources, everyone is fighting each other for power. The cost of labor in my country also has to compete with the cost of labor in other countries like China. It’s embedded in everything.
If I paint your fence and do a crappy job, but I worked real hard otherwise, should I get the same pay as someone else who equally worked hard but did a better job?
If I am good at digging holes, but cannot monetize my own labor, is it fair to sell my labor to a company who can monetize me digging holes? Is if fair that the company takes a portion of that value so that I can have guaranteed pay?
No one is fighting for power anymore dude, you must be heavily misinformed. Power has been consolidated since Reagan. The only way to go forward is to flip the table, remove the entire cancer and redistribute wealth and resources. Everything else is laughably out of touch.
The game ended 40 years ago, unbelievable people are still being misled and lapping up lies saying otherwise.
You literally contradicted yourself. You literally called for the redistribution of wealth and resources. Which is the same as the redistribution of power.
You explained it as clear as day for these people and still no one is getting it… Thats why some people make more. They can explain things to people and that’s why some people make less… they can’t even absorb basic information.
So when Walmart has the resources to come in and take a loss for over a decade by underpricing it's merchandise, effectively destroying 50 business' supporting families, they don't have an unfair advantage by hoarding enough wealth to violently destroy the middle class?
Exactly, then you understand how a hostile industry takeover works. You recognize how it only serves to concentrate wealth and power further, or you're just lying to yourself because you have an overly inflated ego and are trolling.
I'm saying there is no fighting for power in the sense that you describe. That game ended a long time ago.
Hence we need to redistribute it so that we can have a competitive economy again. And then vy for power in a traditional sense again.
It's too concentrated, there is no struggle. It's just accept what the masters say you can have. That's why everything is 4 times the price it was a few years ago. Every industry has been hostily taken over.
I may have misinterpreted what you said, I'll acknowledge that.
But I'm not twisting anything, I'm merely relaying observations on how the economy works and human behavior.
The only innovations today are how to commodify more menial things to exploit the poor further. Meta will buy a seat on the board of a new innovative industry,for $100m. Then sabotage the new tech and ensure it never makes it off the ground, this is a very common business practice nowadays, it's hard to imagine people aren't familiar with it if you have been paying attention.
90% of stocks are owned by 10% of the population. There is virtually no middle class remaining.
We have no competitive advantage, due to concentration of wealth, to make any impactful competition to disrupt these industries who have accumulated such vast percentages of the finite resource cash.
You truly believe people have a competitive advantage in this economy, without a small nations worth of wealth?
Because hard labour isn’t inherently difficult for most people. This concept of getting paid for ‘nothing’ doesn’t exist. Just because it seems easy to them doesn’t mean it isn’t, or wasn’t very difficult to get to the point where it’s easy from an different perspective
My mama get literally does nothing though. Menu other employers report the same thing about their managers and company execs. Coming into work checking emails isn’t exactly difficult, so it is odd that one can get paid 60k a year for that. The labour comes from the workers. Without the workers? The company literally falls part and doesn’t profit
Do the workers have value themselves though? Laborers are dime a dozen but someone with the skills to understand what needs to be done and how, as well as implementing it properly takes much more effort than doing what you’re told. The pay reflects that.
Hard laborers work harder than I do. I developed a skill that half the population would find almost impossible to do, and another 35% of the population would find extremely challenging to do.
I worked hard to develop this skill, but I’d choose it instead of physical labor many times over. Now that I have the skills I can coast and still be paid well.
Not all hard laborers are paid poorly. Commercial fisherman can be paid up to $340k with an average of $75k. Nobody wants to do this job because it sucks, they have more leverage to negotiate pay. When there is more supply than demand for certain jobs why would a company pay more?
In highschool I worked as a stockman for hobby lobby. It was the hardest I worked because they understaffed. There should have been 2-3 stockman per shift. Despite working so hard, and providing value to the company, I had no leverage to increase my pay. When I left the company I was replaced within a week. My job involved hard work, but any able bodied person could do it.
Yes. The value of the work and skills in the marketplace. Simple manual labor is not rare, so it is cheap. Someone with significant skills and connections is rare, so it’s expensive.
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u/OcclusalEmbrasure 6d ago edited 6d ago
An employer who has leverage is exploiting you, I never denied that. My point is that it’s leverage that gives people power. If your best skill set is equivalent to a high school student, you have no leverage. You can obtain leverage by obtaining and developing skills, or by creating value. If not, the employer has all the leverage and will use it to exploit you.
Leverage goes both ways. It’s just people like you refuse to see it both ways. You just think employers with all the leverage will pay you more out of the goodness of their heart. No, you as person has to create leverage so that you can demand it.