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I'm pretty sure it's not possible for companies to simply decide to pay everyone across the economy better in real terms so they can "live a meaningful life", f

by makomk 5y ago

I'm pretty sure it's not possible for companies to simply decide to pay everyone across the economy better in real terms so they can "live a meaningful life", for the simple reason that all of the things those workers want to buy need to be produced, which in turn is constrained by the availability of workers (amongst other things). If a whole bunch of businesses become non-viable due to not being able to get labour, that actually decreases the supply of stuff to buy which means people's pay has to become worse in real terms. Now, of course there are ways to reduce the number of workers required, but the easy options will have been taken by now leaving only capital-intensive choices that require taking other scarce resources (like, say, chips) away from being used to create things people buy directly. There's no magic hoard of money being sat on by the rich or corporations that could just be used to pay people better in real, inflation-adjusted terms. That's inherently limited by the availability of actual stuff, and the super-wealthy just aren't a high enough proportion of overall consumption that there's any way for them to that. Maybe if we were in a 2008-style crisis where unemployment was high and the problem was the financial system there'd be clever solutions involving redistributing money or something, but that's not the reality we're living.

cudgy 5y ago
“ There's no magic hoard of money being sat on by the rich or corporations that could just be used to pay people better in real, inflation-adjusted terms.” Sure there is. The hoard of money is called “profits”. Companies pay higher wages and have less profits or possibly (if they can) raise the prices of their goods to compensate.
DarylZero 5y ago
That depends on how you measure things. I think what people want most of all is to have access to the stability of production guaranteed by modern industrial practices. Our society converts stability and abundance in the production process into precarity and reward/punish incentive structures in the access controls to consumption. These represent fundamentally different modes of interaction with the economy and social environment. They're different worlds. And what does talk about production in "real terms" say about the value of one over the other?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
If we're running out of people, then shouldn't the companies that produce less per person be the ones that die? Anything else would be sub-optimal.

by makomk 5y ago

cudgy 5y ago

“ There's no magic hoard of money being sat on by the rich or corporations that could just be used to pay people better in real, inflation-adjusted terms.” Sure there is. The hoard of money is called “profits”. Companies pay higher wages and have less profits or possibly (if they can) raise the prices of their goods to compensate.

DarylZero 5y ago

That depends on how you measure things. I think what people want most of all is to have access to the stability of production guaranteed by modern industrial practices. Our society converts stability and abundance in the production process into precarity and reward/punish incentive structures in the access controls to consumption. These represent fundamentally different modes of interaction with the economy and social environment. They're different worlds. And what does talk about production in "real terms" say about the value of one over the other?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

If we're running out of people, then shouldn't the companies that produce less per person be the ones that die? Anything else would be sub-optimal.