Not at all. But lots of manual labor is vastly under-compensated and generally has a career length time that is shorter than, say, being a lawyer or a doctor or a professor—all professions that are hard and hard to qualify requiring years of education and credentialing. But you can still teach physics at a university when you are in your 70’s. My contractor who is some years younger than I am( and well educated) retired before I did because of the toll years of that work took on his body. A couple of other tradespeople I worked with have retired—again, at a younger age than I did—and I took army retirement—for the same reason. And those jobs pay pretty decently. A lot of jobs are as physically demanding and physically punishing or more so. Yet few people are financially in a position to retire in their 50’s and are not necessarily in a position to retrain and start a new career in their 50’s. But injuries—or cumulative injuries force retirement.
At least in our respective youths, we were probably the same size. I’m short and except for pregnancy and during breastfeeding, I never weighed as much as 105 and mostly stayed under 100 until after my third child. And yes, I worked in fields and in food service, retail, child care and other work that paid very little and was fairly physically demanding. The year I worked in food service, I did not eat every day because I didn’t get paid enough to have food every day.
I get where you're coming from, but this is the marxist Labor Theory of Value. It's a fundamental assumption that wages should somehow reflect the amount of effort put in by the person doing the work. But labor is no less subject to economic forces than any other service or good.
It sucks, and I agree that society should in some fashion address it... but at the end of the day manual labor is a commodity. It's almost entirely fungible. The supply of people capable of doing manual labor is very high, and there's nothing inherent in the nature of the work itself that allows one provider of the service to distinguish themselves from another provider in a meaningful way. Aside from clever marketing, an egg is an egg is an egg. The consumer really doesn't care which farm the egg came from, let alone which chicken - the egg can be provided by any chicken or farm, and serve just as well in an omelette. The same thing is true for manual and other unskilled labor.
If you want to increase the wages for unskilled labor, you really have three choices. The first is to create distinguishing characteristics - create a marketing narrative around the group of workers that highlights some aspect that appeals to consumers (or employers) and makes those purchasers willing to pay more for what is essentially the same product. This is pretty much free-range eggs as compared to store-brand eggs. They work equally well when you're making a cake, but customers are willing to pay more for free-range because of emotional responses to things that have nothing at all to do with eggs. And there's nothing wrong with that - I buy free-range eggs because I like the idea of happier chickens, and I'm willing to pay more for that idea.
The second way is to alter the beliefs of consumers as a whole. Find a narrative to sell that convinces enough of the public that these unskilled commodities are of more inherent worth than they currently value them at. If I knew how to accomplish that, I'd definitely do so. There are many trades out there that I personally think are undervalued, and I think society as a whole would be better off if we collectively valued them higher - this includes but is not limited to nurses and teachers.
The last way is the sledgehammer approach of using policy to force wages higher. It can be done, certainly. So far raising minimum wage hasn't come with as much increased cost as most people expected. It could still go sideways, it's all a matter of balance.
Being poor or just poorly paid is extremely debilitating, physically and emotionally. Not everyone is as fortunate as I was in being able to change lives.
As I’ve mentioned, just looking at 3 of our siblings, my husband and I are asking ourselves how much we can afford to help them now or in the future because despite having worked their whole lives, they never earned a lot of money, have always lived very modestly, and have very little or nothing saved for their retirements which are looming—if they can afford it. All three have had or still have serious health conditions. I know a couple of people who are much younger and because of health conditions have never and will never be able to fully support themselves. I see people in my community who struggle, work hard and every time they get a little bit ahead—face enormous set backs due to layoffs, or losing a job because they took too many days off when their kid was sick. Women are forced by economics to go back to work way too soon for their own health and for the wellbeing of their families.
It would be much better if everyone earned a living wage: enough to pay for good and shelter and clothing and to set aside a little for emergencies and retirement but that’s not possible fur a lot of people.
Aside from people with disabilities that preclude them from working, why do you think it's not possible? Let me try to be more clear, do you think it's just a matter of the wages themselves being too low, or do you think there's something else that makes it not possible for a lot of people to accomplish those goals? Is it the cost of housing, the cost of food, etc? There's a lot of elements involved here, I want to know what you think the problem spots are, the underlying issues that need to be addressed.
I have a lot of sympathy for small businesses which struggle to stay afloat and struggle to attract and retain good employees. Certainly UBI would benefit those companies?
I'm going to need you to elaborate on why you think UBI would be good for small businesses, because I'm not seeing the connection you're making.
And yes I do think that wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals should pay more in taxes to help support those who do not and cannot earn enough to live a decent life.
Meh. Some yeah, some no. I want a reasonable method of taxation, with the elimination of loopholes. But I also don't have the sort of "eat the rich" view that some people seem to espouse. On principle, I'm very much opposed to the idea that wealth is bad and that wealthy people are evil or somehow the cause of all of our woes. I don't want systems that allow for exploitation of other people... but I also don't think that taxes should be some punishment employed to force equal outcomes and to stick it to the rich for the sin of being rich. That's an ideological position I don't hold, and that I think is dangerous - not saying you hold that view, just expressing my own position trying to stay balanced on a teeter totter that has tweedle dee on one side and tweedle dum on the other.
Call me crazy, but I have a bit of an ethical objection to people charging abusive rates for necessary services where the customer doesn't have an alternative.
