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Salaries and living expenses have become really disconnected. These are inherently disconnected. Salary is related to the value of an employee's labour. In the
by uiri 9y ago
Salaries and living expenses have become really disconnected.
These are inherently disconnected. Salary is related to the value of an employee's labour. In the contemporary US, the value of a software developer is high. In that same place, the value of unskilled or low-skilled labour is below the federal minimum wage in a lot of cases.
Living expenses are related to the costs of real estate, food, transportation, etc. Some of these things are highly labour intensive so their costs are related to the cost of labour. Things which are not labour intensive have their prices dominated by unrelated supply and demand issues. Real estate is not labour intensive. A single landlord can probably handle dozens of properties.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago> Real estate is not labour intensive. A single landlord can probably handle dozens of properties. I can only suspect you don’t own property that you rent out. Tenants of just one flat, if demanding and complaining enough, can easily burden a landlord beyond any extent he considers acceptable. Any landlord whose portfolio extends into the dozens of properties will almost certainly have contracted all the actual work out to an agency with its own staff of multiple people.
- dmurray 9y agoIt's still true though: the agency with multiple full time staff members probably handles hundreds of properties, or has other lines of business as well.
- AndrewOMartin 9y ago"Salary is related to the value of an employee's labour." That would be lovely, but I think salary is related to what the employee can get away with paying the employee, regardless of the "real" value. It's not a totally churlish example to point out how little good mothers get paid by the state for their value of their work. There might be a similar reconsideration of how living expenses are reached.