Brewha wrote:Oh, you are right about Amazon. My business it so build warehouse automation for them and many others. A big factor in the ROI for a system is not just lowering head count; it is greater operator efficiency and accuracy. So the people with simple tasks get a lot more done and a lot less wrong – they become worth more, while being payed less.
Being able to get more done and less wrong, because on an investment in automation, does not make you worth more. If the task has been simplified and optimized to the point that individual competencies are irrelevant, the opposite is true, you are worth less. It is the infrastructure surrounding you and keeping you from making errors which is so valuable.
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And it is the job of any business buying labor to get it as cheap as possible – free is best. Think of the boon to the US economy if all workers took a 50% pay cut! We should all be for that – yes?
Businesses are not there to benefit workers; they are there to generate profits. So workers are a necessary evil that are fundamentally opposed to business goals.
Just as "work" is fundamentally opposed to worker's goals. This isn't a surprise to anyone. Businesses would love to have free labor, duh. Just like every worker would love the business have to pay them to do no work. The price of labor is a negotiation between these two groups. This isn't rocket surgery....
Quote:But there is a social truth here to be reckoned with – If business can drive the cost of their labor as low as they would like, then the workers need government supplements to get by. All workers must earn a living. If they can’t than the business model is not viable and it is the business that is living off the government.
1 - "earn a living" is not a right for all workers. Some people may need to work 60hrs a week to be able to afford food and shelter. Some may need to work 70hrs a week. To assume that any piece of labor required by a company MUST have a value such that someone performing that piece of labor can survive off 40hrs of work a week is ensuring that some work just won't get done. This is the work at the margin, which is not valuable enough to the company to pay minimum rates, but where there is a worker who actually would be willing to do that work for the market value.
2 - Why do you automatically assume that just because a company isn't paying a living wage, the government needs to subsidize the individuals life? Perhaps if this subsidization were not available, the worker would be more aggressive in their negotiation?
Quote:There will always be pools of poor laborers that are forced to take little to nothing for their work, because something is better than nothing. But we all pay for that in the end.
Meh. I think you're just saying that because you think it sounds pithy.