DBT
Contributor
If it were the old British mercantile system of the 1800s (that Marx railed against), that gibberish would almost make a little sense. However, today keeping costs down is necessary to compete in the market.They are apparently getting more than their 'fair market value' as evidenced by Walmart is finding that automation is more economical than the non-skilled workers it is replacing. Of course Luddites will have hissy fits.And you don't seem to understand reality. When the minimum wage is set at a rate greater than the value/hour of unskilled workers then the company automates or relocates or maybe drops a product line (and the workers on that product) that is made unprofitable. Which means that rather than receiving low wages the worker receives no wages.So you do understand. A worker with nothing marketable to sell to his customer (the business he wants to work for) will not get much for his product (his labor). It is odd that you advocate that the business should pay more to buy an unmarketable product rather than that the worker should develop some marketable skills to sell.
The customer may hold the balance of power when it comes to quoting price.
The firm may be desperate for work, perhaps with too much competition in town they quote low in order to secure work.
If the shoe is on the other foot, prices surge, they quote high.
Supply and demand.
Individual workers without marketable skills, without protection in law, or a union, tend to get exploited. That's human nature.
It appears that I understand the issue far better than you.
We are not just talking nothing more than a commodity, but people's lives. Just because there may be a pool of unemployed to draw from shouldn't give firms free rein to exploit. Which is why progressive nations set minimum pay and conditions.....without which it's a race to the bottom. Merciless exploitation of workers regardless of the firms ability to pay significantly more. Greed rules.
There are countless examples of this in history and in current times.
But it's not set at market value of the labour. Look at places like Walmart, do you think that the workers are getting a fair market value for their labour and the wealth they help generate?
Skilled labor does not mean lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc. It means plumbers, electricians, carpenters, heavy equipment operators, etc. etc. Skills that can be learned in fairly short time either in a trade school, independently, or as on the job training. Such skilled labor is in high demand and well paid. Minimum wage jobs that require no skills should be considered by a worker as temporary while they are learning the skills to really enter the job market.
I think it is a failure of government and government schools that people are graduating from public schools with no job skills. The "industrial arts" that were taught were phased out during the middle 20th century. Classes like wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, etc. etc. gave students skills that would allow them to step into a well paying job. Now learning job skills is left to the initiative of each individual.
The desire to reduce running costs drives automation, which doesn't mean that Walmart wasn't a profitable business before automation.
It's another example of cost cutting in order to increase profits. If pay can't be kept to a bare minimum, practically slave wages, let's automate.
Utter nonsense. The world is much more than Walmart.If that practice becomes widespread, there may be fewer customers - there being a large base of long term unemployed - to buy their products.
More Marxist nonsense.Not to mention creating a sector of disenfranchised people living with a sense hopelessness, drug addiction and social unrest.
You still haven't explained why you think that unskilled people can't learn the skills necessary so they can compete in the job market, if they have the initiative. It is as if you believe that individuals have absolutely no personal responsibility, that they are surfs forbidden by law to act in their own behalf as individuals. You appear to accept the Marxist idea that, instead of individuals, only classes exist and that everyone must remain in their class because there are class barriers and there is no class mobility.
It has nothing to do with Marxism. It's how the world works, human nature in relation to how business is conducted in terms of profits and running costs.
It's only natural that a business maximizes its profits and keeps its costs down.
Which is fair enough.
The issue here is when business interests take advantage of marginalized workers and use their own leverage to suppress wages to the point where the pay rate barely cover basics expenses and do not relate to the productive value the employees.
Employers get to pick what they pay.
''If price growth merely stays at its current level of 3.5%, the budget’s forecast of 3.25% wages growth means real wages will fall.
And, given most of the budgets since 2014 have overestimated wages growth, it is worth considering what would happen if wages growth has been overestimated once again: real wages would fall still further.
Something weird is happening in the labour market.
With very few unemployed people available for each vacancy, employers ought to be offering higher wages to compete for workers.
But the concept of “monopsony” gives us an idea why that’s not happening.
The core idea of monopsony is that employers can choose (within constraints) the wages they pay their workers.''