5 ms·

What stopping you from paying much more to these poor workers?

• tyree731 5y ago
  There are people who do pay more to these sorts of workers, but that doesn't fix the broader, societal problem.
• lmilcin 5y ago
  What is stopping companies is competition. If you own a supermarket and want to pay a decent wage, bad news for you. Over long time you are likely to loose against your competitor who doesn't share your sentiment. You may start with 100 companies of which 2 don't have any scruples and over time you will find out that these companies will take over the market along with other ones that will use this experience as learning on how to make successful business. In the end the companies that are more aggressive win because that is just the nature of competition. Governments are there exactly to protect individual people from aggressive predation.
  • tbihl 5y ago
    >If you own a supermarket and want to pay a decent wage, bad news for you. Over long time you are likely to loose against your competitor who doesn't share your sentiment. If you can market this "decent wage" to your customers successfully enough that they buy in, then you can continue along this trajectory. (As a side note, most people here probably wouldn't take you up on that "decent wage" retail job, in part because they don't consider the wages very impressive. On the other hand, people who work at the "unscrupulous" grocery stores have agreed to those wages. So "decent" might have a sliding scale.)
    • lmilcin 5y ago
      That only works if your customers are willing to pay for employees to be paid better. As it is, it seems most people do not give a fuck about it and will still choose a store that is cheaper. Actually, everybody knows Walmart or Amazon employees are paid shit and they still choose cheap.
      • midasuni 5y ago
        From what I’ve seen in the U.K., Amazon shelf stackers get paid more than salaries at local inefficient independent shops
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • megaman821 5y ago
    Half the comments are suggesting that the investor class is just pocketing the extra wealth. How is that going to result in all their competitors going out of business? So I am guessing by no scruples you mean lowering the cost of goods to consumers. I am not sure how that qualifies as evil.
    • orwin 5y ago
      > Half the comments are suggesting that the investor class is just pocketing the extra wealth. That's were most economists, orthodox or heterodox (Neo-keynesian, MMT) agree, the capitalist class captured all productivity gains since the 70s. They disagree on the "how". And imho, you are right, they are not stealing wages, they are capturing wealth creation, it's not the same thing, and its pernicious because most of them don't understand how it works (and those who are able to try hard to not understand). I used to think people were idiot to go after the banks ten years ago, but in fact, they were intuitively way more intelligent than a "rational" me. I just did not understood "how money works".
• q1w2 5y ago
  If a worker wants to partake in the profits of the company, they should work for a public company and buy shares, or be part of a company that offers profit sharing/private shares/options/bonus compensation. Their salary is a cost, like any other expense, and should be kept to a minimum, and only high enough to retain talented employees according to the market rates for those positions. That's a fundamental principle of corporate accounting.
  • uoaei 5y ago
    This is a stringently normative claim that perpetuates the is-ought fallacy.