These words get thrown around a lot here, so I'd like to take a thread to look in depth at how we evaluate these. On one side we have people saying workers pay is too low, and on the other we have people saying the workers are not working hard enough. We also have one side saying the super wealthy earned their income, while the other side says they did not. Clearly both sides can't be right, so let's actually talk about what we mean when we say "earn" and "value" in relation to salary.
First we need some historical bearings. The ability for information to travel faster than people was a true game changer in our society. When you only had radio and telephone, it was nearly impossible for a chain store to exist. Even the ones that did were usually completely locally managed. If you worked at a restaurant the money only had to be split between the workers there, the manager there, and cost to upkeep the business. However, once the internet and telephones were made more available, we were able to watch over much greater areas. A hundred years ago you could hope to be the leader of a town in some industry, then it moved to leader of a state, then a nation, and now it's global. Corporations now are global entities, which means you can't go somewhere else where they are less powerful to try to start a business. It also means that people can make the same amount of money for the same job.
A manager makes sure his workers are working and receives a higher wage for making the system efficient. It used to end here, but now we can have someone manage the managers, and someone manage those people. We keep giving them more money, but they are not adding any true "value" in most cases. If your job is to manage 5 managers, why are you paid millions while someone who manages 5 workers is only paid 40,000? Realistically it's the same job, but the wealth difference is highly unbalanced. It also just gets worse as technology gets better. If you only have to manage 5 robots, now you make millions + 40,000, and there's no real incentive to keep people employed instead. As these companies get bigger, they are just concentrating money in a very small minority. The CEO's work's "value" is no higher than a local manager, but he makes 500 times as much. Why not only 200 times as much?
The other issue America is running into is how we determine what you've "earned." Let's look at someone making burgers for minimum wage at McDonalds. If you make 20 combo meals an hour, you've made the company ~$100, but they only give you back 7.25. It used to be that the 100 of "wealth" you generated would get split between you, your manager, and the cost of upkeep. Now however, you get 7.25, the manager gets ~10, and the other $82.75( minus upkeep) is sent away to other higher ups that have never been to that store before. The CEO only gets paid because the worker "created" $100. The workers of course notice how unfair this is. If the CEO benefits enough from their labor to buy a private jet, why can't they benefit enough to buy health care or pay rent? The CEO and other higher ups then will tell the workers that "if you want to afford nice things, you have to work harder." They are clearly generating enough wealth to be paid a reasonable wage, and the owners are taking most of it away because the owners claim it was them who "earned" the wealth by giving the worker a job.
Of course, if it was this simple we would have changed things already. However, a huge portion of very outspoken people will defend this system, saying the free market will correct this imbalance. What they don't realize is that the free market has become severely outdated. When it was originally conceived a worker could leave if he was being cheated out of his fair share. However, now that we've outsourced so many jobs and now that computers are doing so many jobs for us we have a much greater availability of workers. If you are upset about your share, then when you quit the company will just replace you with someone who wont' complain, and will be able to do that nearly indefinitely.
Naturally if you can't get a decent paying job, you can't afford for your child to go to school. This is why you hear things about the middle class getting poorer. It's not that individuals are losing money so much as there are less families that are staying in their general wealth bracket. The corporations clearly are not going to fix this problem since it makes them lots of money, so it's the government's job to step in and instate a minimum wage, and to tax(federal only applies to future profits really) the super wealthy and give it to the poor. It's not so much that the poor are freeloading, but rather they are being given back what they earned. You have the right to make a profit, but you don't have the right to take away others profits.
First we need some historical bearings. The ability for information to travel faster than people was a true game changer in our society. When you only had radio and telephone, it was nearly impossible for a chain store to exist. Even the ones that did were usually completely locally managed. If you worked at a restaurant the money only had to be split between the workers there, the manager there, and cost to upkeep the business. However, once the internet and telephones were made more available, we were able to watch over much greater areas. A hundred years ago you could hope to be the leader of a town in some industry, then it moved to leader of a state, then a nation, and now it's global. Corporations now are global entities, which means you can't go somewhere else where they are less powerful to try to start a business. It also means that people can make the same amount of money for the same job.
A manager makes sure his workers are working and receives a higher wage for making the system efficient. It used to end here, but now we can have someone manage the managers, and someone manage those people. We keep giving them more money, but they are not adding any true "value" in most cases. If your job is to manage 5 managers, why are you paid millions while someone who manages 5 workers is only paid 40,000? Realistically it's the same job, but the wealth difference is highly unbalanced. It also just gets worse as technology gets better. If you only have to manage 5 robots, now you make millions + 40,000, and there's no real incentive to keep people employed instead. As these companies get bigger, they are just concentrating money in a very small minority. The CEO's work's "value" is no higher than a local manager, but he makes 500 times as much. Why not only 200 times as much?
The other issue America is running into is how we determine what you've "earned." Let's look at someone making burgers for minimum wage at McDonalds. If you make 20 combo meals an hour, you've made the company ~$100, but they only give you back 7.25. It used to be that the 100 of "wealth" you generated would get split between you, your manager, and the cost of upkeep. Now however, you get 7.25, the manager gets ~10, and the other $82.75( minus upkeep) is sent away to other higher ups that have never been to that store before. The CEO only gets paid because the worker "created" $100. The workers of course notice how unfair this is. If the CEO benefits enough from their labor to buy a private jet, why can't they benefit enough to buy health care or pay rent? The CEO and other higher ups then will tell the workers that "if you want to afford nice things, you have to work harder." They are clearly generating enough wealth to be paid a reasonable wage, and the owners are taking most of it away because the owners claim it was them who "earned" the wealth by giving the worker a job.
Of course, if it was this simple we would have changed things already. However, a huge portion of very outspoken people will defend this system, saying the free market will correct this imbalance. What they don't realize is that the free market has become severely outdated. When it was originally conceived a worker could leave if he was being cheated out of his fair share. However, now that we've outsourced so many jobs and now that computers are doing so many jobs for us we have a much greater availability of workers. If you are upset about your share, then when you quit the company will just replace you with someone who wont' complain, and will be able to do that nearly indefinitely.
Naturally if you can't get a decent paying job, you can't afford for your child to go to school. This is why you hear things about the middle class getting poorer. It's not that individuals are losing money so much as there are less families that are staying in their general wealth bracket. The corporations clearly are not going to fix this problem since it makes them lots of money, so it's the government's job to step in and instate a minimum wage, and to tax(federal only applies to future profits really) the super wealthy and give it to the poor. It's not so much that the poor are freeloading, but rather they are being given back what they earned. You have the right to make a profit, but you don't have the right to take away others profits.
