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No, yours is the uncharitable explanation. In reality it shows that Ford understood that all of us are in this together (“The owner, the employees, and the buy
by igravious 8y ago
No, yours is the uncharitable explanation.
In reality it shows that Ford understood that all of us are in this together (“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same”) – and we take it that Ford was not only referring to his own employees but to all employees. So if you want the public to be able to by your goods then we ought to recognise that the public must be able to afford those goods. By extension, even though a capitalist might want to increase profits by keeping wages low he must realise that he decreases the market for his own goods – if enough owners think this way – (“and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers”). To sum it up, (“One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.”) doesn't mean that every single one of your employees will buy your product – rather it's an aspirational statement encouraging all owners to pay their employees a living wage and not to myopically fixate on margins and the bottom line.
It would be showmanship if Ford said this and then turned around and paid his employees crap and worked them to the bone, but
“In 1914, Henry Ford made a big announcement that shocked the country. It caused the financial editor at The New York Times to stagger into the newsroom and ask his staff in a stunned whisper, “He’s crazy, isn’t he? Don’t you think he’s crazy?”
That morning, Ford would begin paying his employees $5.00 a day, over twice the average wage for automakers in 1914.
In addition, he was reducing the work day from 9 hours to 8 hours, a significant drop from the 60-hour work week that was the standard in American manufacturing.”
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-perspective/ford-doubles-minimum-wage.html http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per...
You're the uncharitable one. You're either a sink-or-swim type or dead cynical because I can't believe you're not intelligent enough to be able to take what Ford said at face value.
I watched a video today about a young American describing his visit (for a sprained foot) to a clinic in the Netherlands and an emergency room in Germany. He recounted his visits because he was so shocked that at how little he had to pay for an X-ray and meds and how little time he waited to get a referral and how little time he spent in the hospital. I honestly think that there's something deeply damaged at the heart of the American psyche. You've no sense that you are “are all one and the same” to use Ford's words. You can't see why collectively paying taxes for healthcare (everyone's family has an illness at some point in time) and collectively bargaining for cheaper medicines from manufacturers might be overall a good thing. You can't see why paying regular folks a living wage benefits all of society, even those who have to do the paying. No man is an island, we're all in the same boat. But hey, I'm all right Jack, I've got mine huh? There's only so much inequity and hardship people will take before something breaks – history shows us this time and time again.
- tcbawo 8y agoAs they say, America is a country of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
- biocomputation 8y ago<< I honestly think that there's something deeply damaged at the heart of the American psyche. You've no sense that you are “are all one and the same” to use Ford's words. You can't see why collectively paying taxes for healthcare (everyone's family has an illness at some point in time) and collectively bargaining for cheaper medicines from manufacturers might be overall a good thing. More than half of Americans support single-payer. Some estimates are as high as 70%. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-medicare-for-all-and-free-college-tuition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-m... I absolutely support single-payer and so do most of the people I know. There isn't a HN thread long enough for the discussion of what it might take to actually get single-payer done.
- igravious 8y ago70% ? If that's true then that's fantastic but also very worrying. This shows that whereas the majority of the nation support some form of single-payer option the government (no matter who is in charge) resists it. This means that the government works for the few, not the many. This implies an oligarchy which turns out to be verifiable[0]. Out of interest I looked up all the countries that have neither free nor universal healthcare[1] and cross-ranked them according to their human development index[2]. The list is quite small. What we see is that the US is the only country with a _supposedly_ very high human development index (and the only one in the top 70 of countries) that has a healthcare system that is neither free nor fair. 8 out of the 10 least developed countries in the world are on this list. How Americans are not figuratively up in arms over this is beyond me. I think it is fair to say that the US political system is broken in a very real sense. This is worrying because traditionally only catastrophe curbs inequality this bad[3] and I'm not sure incrementalism works in a broken system. Oh well, time will tell. Country Free? All? Level Rank United States No No V 13 Saint Kitts and Nevis No No H 72 Grenada No No H 75 Lebanon No No H 80 Dominican Republic No No H 94 Jordan No No H 95 Suriname No No H 100 Dominica No No H 103 Marshall Islands No No H 106 Turkmenistan No No H 108 Indonesia No No M 116 Iraq No No M 120 Tajikistan No No M 127 Micronesia No No M 131 Kenya No No M 142 Cambodia No No M 146 Angola No No M 147 Cameroon No No M 151 Syrian Arab Republic No No L 155 Zimbabwe No No L 156 Nigeria No No L 157 Mauritania No No L 159 Senegal No No L 164 Comoros No No L 165 Sudan No No L 167 Haiti No No L 168 Afghanistan No No L 168 Gambia No No L 174 Guinea No No L 175 Guinea-Bissau No No L 177 Mozambique No No L 180 Liberia No No L 181 Mali No No L 182 Sierra Leone No No L 184 Burundi No No L 185 Chad No No L 186 South Sudan No No L 187 Niger No No L 189 Somalia No No - --- [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-u...