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The U.K. has massively increased minimum wage over he last decade or so, but this has meant people who used to be on 50-100% more than minimum wage are now find
by chgs 3y ago
The U.K. has massively increased minimum wage over he last decade or so, but this has meant people who used to be on 50-100% more than minimum wage are now finding themselves on the same wage as shelf stackers.
They are of course now questioning why they bothered to do so much training, incurring debt and lost opportunity, to find everyone on the same wage.
- pseudocomposer 3y agoSeems like they need to organize/unionize then, no? Their failure to do so isn’t the “shelf stackers’” fault. If anything, this gives them leverage to get paid more. But they have to use it, because capitalists will never pay someone fairly if they don’t fight for it.
- ctrw 3y agoA job is worth only so much. When wages raise above that amount those jobs disappear. Street sweepers are one example.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DiscourseFan 3y agoYes, well, many young programmers today are finding it increasingly difficult to find a good job out of school, what with all the new AI tools and general diffusion of the skill across the global population. The skills required to be a "shelf stacker" are generally taught in public schools. What did you think would happen when they started teaching all these kids to program as well? There is a good reason why these giant tech companies kept lobbying for, and creating school programs centered around code-education, and I hope you realize it wasn't purely philanthropic.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoExactly. It's an economic *system*. Change X and there is impact not only on W and Y but perhaps also V and Z. So to say, "Look! We raised the min wage and people earned more money. That's the bottomline", is naive at best. Furthermore (re: California), increasing the min wage is not a fix for the housing supply and associated failed policies.
- DiscourseFan 3y agoMarx always emphasised the general law of capitalist accumulation: no matter what temporary victories a local population might win (wage increases, stable housing, free education and healthcare, etc.), as long as Capital continues to dominate the social world, people will always be enslaved to the conditions of the market, and every effort will be made to extract as much surplus value as possible, since its what produces the most productivity and profit in the capitalist system.
- ryandrake 3y agoThey really should turn their ire towards their employers, not resent shelf stackers for making the same wage. They have all this training, debt, and lost opportunity, and their employers still pay them minimum wage? That doesn't seem acceptable to me. And it doesn't have anything to do with the shelf stackers.
- thereisnospork 3y agoMarket value has to be considered though, can't blame a car mechanic for being pissed that regulations force a shelf stocker, a lower value/difficulty job, to be paid the same (above fair market value).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 3y agoCar mechanic should be pissed: at his employer, not at the government. His employer is the one choosing to pay him the same as a shelf stocker. In a functioning labor market with empowered workers, all wages would rise to reflect the skill/scarcity gap between minimum wage work and skilled work.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIf all wages rise, than inflations rises along with it… to cancel out the wage rises in practice (unless productivity improves). As the last few years have shown.
- danaris 3y agoSo what you're saying is, under this theory, increases in productivity create real improvements in people's purchasing power? In that case, how do you explain the last 40+ years, where productivity has been skyrocketing, but most peoples purchasing power has remained mostly flat? Or is it your contention that there is nothing we can do that can increase the purchasing power of regular people under the current system? Because if that's the case, that would be a pretty massive indictment of the system as a whole.