Posted on 06/18/2002 4:49:06 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Edited on 05/07/2004 8:00:50 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Would it be a job or slavery to pay someone a dollar a week for full-time work? How about a dollar a day? A dollar an hour? The critical difference between employment and slavery obviously hinges on whether the pay can support basic survival.
(Excerpt) Read more at theithacajournal.com ...
I was an UNpaid intern at the Ithaca Journal in the 1970s!!!
I then segued into a part-time paid slot, and finally a full-time job there.
that ain't on my map, whereabouts is it? We'ed be coming up I-90 from Mass. What's it near?
Cornell's business school, which I did not attend, enjoys a pretty good reputation according the the biz press. Though I rarely see any of its grads in the markets.
A propos "living wages", I saw a piece about DIY supermarket scanning that cuts the number of cashiers needed on a shift by 75%.
The payback time for the technology IIRC was about 9 months.
So instead of 4 clerks making, say, $8/hour, now there'll be one making $10, and a computer that can't go on stike, take a cig break, get pregnant, file for workers' comp.....
And now for something completely different, let's think it through from a COMMON SENSE point of view.
The entry level employee gets a government mandated $1 p. hour raise. Now he's making the same wage as the employee that's been there a year. The one year employee feels that that is unfair and asks for a raise. It's not fair. He gets a raise. Now the one year employee is making as much as the apprentice who'se been there even longer. The apprentice demands a raise. He gets it. Now the apprentice is making as much as the journeyman. The journeyman wants a raise. Does he get it? He can if the company raises the price of its product or service which it can do if the market will pay the increase. If that happens the people paying for that product or service will raise their prices to cover the cost. If it continues thus the cost of everything will go up until it levels out to a point where the entry level employee is making the same wage, adjusted for costs, as he was before the government mandated raise.
More likely the employer will lay off the journeyman and raise his prices anyway to offset the effect of having a less experienced staff (not to mention his rent, taxes, lisences and materials costs which oddly enough will probably be going up) and will thus be charging more for a lower quality product or service.
The only catch in that is if some enterprising businessman (or corp.) can supply that product/service from offshore/south-of-the-border/or some such as cheap or cheaper than it was before the mandated raise. In which case all the businesses in that sector will close their doors (and a whole bunch of businesses that served them.) and the entry level employee can join a mass of better trained people in the unemployment lines.
Isn't socialism a hoot?
I see reparations in your future, my friend. A living wage fo the 1970's, plus 25 years worth of interest - those greedy bourgeois capitalist exploiters at the Ithaca Journal have stolen your noble proletarian labor. Expropriate the product of that which was stolen from you, worker!
Excuse me while I go and fetch the good scotch, in order to get this taste out of my mouth...
Then it stands to reason that left to the market, those employers would have a difficult time attracting and keeping good help.
This in turn would result in said employer having difficulty providing the same level of goods and/or services as his competitors, and in time forcing him out of the market.
And, left to the market, those said goods/services would cost less to deliver because the manufacturers would not have to compensate for an artificial labor cost factored into the final price.
Don't know if it applies to non-faculty positions, but B-schools (save for HBS) do not hire their own grads to teach.
In this nut-case's case, it probably has to do with the real-world observation that "we are our own worst customer."
The relationship was purely consensual, and I admit to proposing the idea.
We both benefited, and I still harbor warm memories of the IJ from its pre-PC days.
One Famous Grad was Dick Ferris who almost took United Airlines to the brink of extinction with his schemes to cut wages and everything else but his own Golden 'Chute'.
In any case - you poor, deluded sap. You're obviously alienated from the product of your labor, and haven't yet come to understand your class consciousness and your own best interests. Fortunately for you, I (and my lefty buddies from the City of Evil) know what's good for you, far better than you do, by virtue of our superior insight into the nature of the capitalist system. And we'll get you your reparations, just as soon as we can figure out who you stole your property from and who rightly belongs to.
Power to the people! Or, failing that, power to me and my buddies, who know what's good for the people! :-)
I actually bought and read "The Writings of the Young Marx" and the "Marx-Engels Reader" in...the CofE!
I bet they had a great big section of Marx and his fellow travelers, in a prominent place, at the local bookstore...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.