You're reminding me of the "Spanish Theory of Value" as explained in the book Peopleware (DeMarco & Lister). I highly recommend this book. From Chapter 3 of th

You're reminding me of the "Spanish Theory of Value" as explained in the book Peopleware (DeMarco & Lister). I highly recommend this book. From Chapter 3 of the book: "The Spanish Theory...held that only a fixed amount of value existed on earth, and therefore the path to the accumulation of wealth was to learn to extract it more efficiently from the soil or from people's back." I think that most folks, once they're a few years into their careers, have seen and understood that this theory of management and value extraction is alive and well in corporate America today. From the same chapter: "Productivity ought to mean achieving more in an hour of work, but all too often it has come to mean extracting more for an hour of pay. There is a large difference." So I agree with you. It seems obvious to me as well that companies should pay as much as possible. But they don't think that way, because they're coming from a different value set.