My grandfather was an old school UAW worker back in the 1960s and 1970s and once he was telling stories about how the more senior guys get to choose the jobs they wanted. He started to talk about some guys who had been around so long they got to be "sweepers". Being a young and naive teenager at the time I asked him "you mean like they go around working on whatever problem needs the most attention". And he said "no, they go around with a broom sweeping things".
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Unskilled =/= Not Valuable
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My grandfather was an old school UAW worker back in the 1960s and 1970s and once he was telling stories about how the more senior guys get to choose the jobs they wanted. He started to talk about some guys who had been around so long they got to be "sweepers". Being a young and naive teenager at the time I asked him "you mean like they go around working on whatever problem needs the most attention". And he said "no, they go around with a broom sweeping things".
Crazy Eddie
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To clarify: the claim is that their lack of skills and therefore cheapness is what makes them valuable in the first place. It's in the same sense that a chattel slave is more valuable to a plantation farmer than a paid farmhand: the slave does the same amount of work -- if not more so -- than the farmhand, but because you don't have to PAY him anything, owning a slave keeps your expenses very very low.
A certain poster is pushing the idea that because these employees are ONLY valued for their cheapness, then taking away their ability to work cheaply would remove the only thing about them that makes them employable. Thus, they are otherwise worthless to their employers except for their ability to perform very simple tasks for very little money.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
What, exactly, is the amount of value per hour YOU produce at your current job and how did you arrive at that value?
SimpleDon
Veteran Member
Wall Street is a perfect example of neoliberal failure. The prohibition against the regulation of derivatives, passed as a law by the Republican Congress under Clinton, was a gift to Wall Street. It allowed them to make up essentially any kind of gamble that they wanted to offer to the public, to tell them any lies that they want to tell the public about the gambles, to sell them in a closed market without having to be bothered with having to tell anyone how many are being sold and at what price they were sold for, how much if anything they earned or what make up the derivatives, i.e. how they work.
It is a license to steal issued to the people who stole much without a license.
The money that Wall Street is chasing is the money that the supply siders redistributed to the rich to invest in the future of the country.
The money that Wall Street gains means that the best and brightest in the country want to work on Wall Street in this non-productive endeavor that is less regulated than the casinos that it most resembles. It is a brain drain away from anything that is remotely good for the economy. It is these unregulated derivatives that when they imploded triggered the 2008 meltdown.
And a more realistic figure might be 1%--or 100 restaurants, not merely one.
I've seen the CFO make a change that amounted to roughly 2% of gross--when our sales were in 8 figures.
prideandfall
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and if that cleaner isn't doing his job well and the bathrooms and the rest of the place are a mess and are unappealing to customers, the store will go out of business.
the minimum wage "unskilled" workers at mcdonald's have vastly more impact on my experience with the business than every CEO in the company put together (save maybe those that have direct input on the menu) - so as far as i'm concerned, the literal face of the company (to the customers) is one of the most important jobs in the entire corporation.
being able to perform tedious, repetitive physical labor while also maintaining a cheery air in the face of a selfish, arrogant, blathering dipshit public is a monumental skill - just because the job is menial doesn't mean the position isn't valuable.
now of course the argument can be made that the value of a given job is arbitrary and based on how people perceive it, and in the US this translates to that level of worker being generally unvalued so i'm not saying that they're secretly seen as valuable and there's a conspiracy to suppress that, i'm just making an argument as to why i think the perception of the "unskilled" worker being low-value is wrong.
DBT
Contributor
I wouldn't necessarily say inferior. If there are not enough positions to go around there may still be many potentially top lawyers failing to get positions. Plus there is the element of who you know rather than what you know or how good you may be, someones nephew or niece may get the position over an applicant who may make a better lawyer.
DBT
Contributor
Not necessarily. If a business finds they can't get a cleaner at the offered wage they may have to increase the offer. This says nothing about the monetary value of cleaning or what the business can afford to pay their cleaners.
They pay as little as they possibly can. They don't care about the lives of their cleaners. The main interest of a business is to make a profit for the owners, management and/or shareholders....profits and salaries and bonuses and perks that apparently has no limit. No amount of money being excessive for those at the top. But heaven forbid that a cleaner gets an extra dollar an hour, the wailing and gnashing of teeth should that happen....!
untermensche
Contributor
The question is WHO sets the value?
Some pig at the top who wants that value to be as low as possible?
Because the way you do that is claim you are paying a "market wage". Which simply means "lowest possible wage".
When you claim you are paying a market wage you now remove the worker from any connection to the value their labor produces. That means nothing when you have a market wage.
It is a form of dehumanization and a way for pigs to grow fat as they steal from all below them.
Some pig at the top who wants that value to be as low as possible?
Because the way you do that is claim you are paying a "market wage". Which simply means "lowest possible wage".
When you claim you are paying a market wage you now remove the worker from any connection to the value their labor produces. That means nothing when you have a market wage.
It is a form of dehumanization and a way for pigs to grow fat as they steal from all below them.
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The work still needs to be done. How then does the work get done?
Jayjay
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The employer could organize his business so it doesn't need to be done anymore. Or uses robots. Or does it himself. Or hires his nephew off the books. Or he raises prices and hopes that his competition has the same handicap.
If the premise is that the work is worth $10, then that's what it's worth to the employer, and positing that he would really be willing to pay more for it anyway is just saying that the original premise was false to begin with.
Harry Bosch
Contributor
Well, as you have noted time and time again, wages are determined by replacement cost not "value".
untermensche
Contributor
That is "market value". The lowest possible cost to get what you need.
It is a form of theft.
An immorality.
Value is subjective and personal. No one "sets it".
Carrots may be worth 10 cents a pound to someone and 10 dollars a pound to someone else.
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Your premise is wrong. There is no such thing as "work that needs to be done".
In other words, you haven't been in a position to see the impact of the decisions the CEO makes.
The market. They pay what they have to in order to get someone adequate.
You have this notion that it is even possible to assign value to the acts of each worker. Synergy effects make this very hard--and really synergy effects should be attributed more to the boss than the workers anyway.
You assume the work is fixed. In reality the cost of labor changes how much work is done.
DBT
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Household Income (AGI) Percent of Households With Lower AGI
$2,000. 9%
$4,000 6.8%
$6,000 9.8%
$8,000 12.7%
$10,000 16.2%
$12,000 19.5%
$14,000 22.8%
$16,000 26%
$18,000 29.2%
$20,000 32.1%
$25,000 38.9%
$30,000 44.8%
$40,000 54.6%
$50,000 62.4%
$75,000 75.4%
$100,000 84%
$200,000 95.8%
$500,000 99.2%
$1,000,000 99.7%
$1,500,000 99.8%
$2,000,000 99.9%
https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/30/
Household Income (AGI) Percent of Households With Lower AGI
$2,000. 9%
$4,000 6.8%
$6,000 9.8%
$8,000 12.7%
$10,000 16.2%
$12,000 19.5%
$14,000 22.8%
$16,000 26%
$18,000 29.2%
$20,000 32.1%
$25,000 38.9%
$30,000 44.8%
$40,000 54.6%
$50,000 62.4%
$75,000 75.4%
$100,000 84%
$200,000 95.8%
$500,000 99.2%
$1,000,000 99.7%
$1,500,000 99.8%
$2,000,000 99.9%
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