Fine. I don’t agree there is an ethical mandate afoot here.
Let me ask you this: imagine a company owned by a man who purports to adhere to a brand of ethics similar to what you believe. His company has, in accord with what you discuss, already cut out the extravagant bonuses for management and pay everyone “fairly” as you would define the term. But the economy is still bad, and the company finds itself facing the need for cuts.
The owner calls Bill to his office. “Bill,” he says, “I’m sorry, but I have to let you go. The company’s profits just haven’t been what we were all counting on, this year.”
Bill says, “I was worried about this, but frankly, after last quarter’s figures, I thought my job was safe, since I was the top performer in my section.”
“Oh, you are, Bill, but the fact is, you’re single and still live with your parents. You’ll get by until you can find another job. Gloria, on the other hand…”
“You’re keeping Gloria? Her numbers were the lowest in our group, and she’s late half the time.”
“Yes, but she’s a single mother, and if i let her go, she’s going to have a much tougher time of it. She’s the sole support of that family.”
Correct. As you so keenly observed, the pertinent factor there was “man.” Women never ate meat.
Truly a dizzying insight.
Or it could be that woman also made contributions to the survival effort that the man did not make, and that those efforts helped the man just as the man’s meat helped the woman.
I wasn’t focusing on the word “man”. I was remarking on the fact that primitive man had a better social policy than modern man. Though I admit, I sloppily assumed that you felt women did not hunt.
America is hardly in the position of primitive nomads in harsh conditions where the nonproductive need to be pushed away from the food pile. There is plenty to go around.
If someone is working what is the point of denying them a living wage?
Whaaa? Did you mean to say “adamantly against maiking it easier to employ people?” Why would anyone be in favor of making it more difficult? And that’s even before I give any attempt to decipher who you’re talking about and what difficulty you’re referring to.
So basically you see the marketplace as akin to the jungle, with people preying on one another like wild animals. Me too! I assume you disapprove of and deplore this state of affairs, as do I.
In the idiocy of the liberal worldview, businesses are considered opposed to people. In reality, they’re all on the same team. Keeping businesses alive is the same thing as keeping people alive.
There are several things wrong with this statement.
Since keeping business alive often requires keeping some people at slave-wage level, your statement only works if “staying alive” must equal, for many people, “living like a slave.” Are you okay with that equation?
Moreover, keeping businesses alive often involves not just exploiting people, but literally killing them through overwork, starvation, job hazards, etc. In that sense, your statement isn’t even problematically true: It’s plainly false.
Keeping businesses alive is just one way to keep some people alive, the majority of whom will (if “keep business alive” is the only mantra) live pretty piss-poor versions of “life.”
They’re not the same thing. One is a means to the other–and a far from ideal means.
Here you say outright that we must not allow most people to draw a living wage. A Living Wage is something you say we have to deny to most people.
Do you know what “living wage” means?
Why do you seem to have an attitude that this “fact” you think is true is a-ok and unproblematic? If you think it’s true that the majority of people have to be denied the means to live, why isn’t your attitude one of despair?
You mean, “In my ridiculous caricature of the liberal worldview” etc?
Do you suppose it is even possible that there are too many businesses? Presumably, you accept that we can have, for instance, too many razors, or too little pollution. There is some social optimum here. It is even possible, in your mind, that we could have too many businesses? That businesses exist which don’t serve society and act as an efficiency drain?
Do you believe it is possible that businesses which don’t pay a living wage to their full-time employees are being subsidized by other areas, and actually could pay a living wage if those were removed? For instance, totally hypothetically, if we imposed a living wage criterion, but eliminated unemployment and social assistance programs like WIC and such, could the market handle it?
Obviously I can’t speak for all liberals everywhere, but those I am familiar with don’t feel that businesses are opposed to people at all. Rather, businesses are like all social institutions, and should exist so long as they serve the public good. If they fail in that capacity, they should change for the better, or cease to exist. If a government program failed to serve the public good, there’d be no question that it should be changed or removed. But government is just one among many institutions. If Wal-Mart can only exist the way it does because of welfare, and you want to eliminate welfare, is it fair for me to say your “conservative worldview is opposed to business”?
From time to time, those at the tippy-top of the socio-economic heap need reminded that they can be dragged from their mansions and killed. See France ca. 1789 and Russia ca. 1917 for two well known examples.
Call it bribery, call it rewarding sloth, call it moral cowardice if it pleases you, but it is money well spent on the part of the Haves (especially the Have-really-really-a-lots) to keep the rabble fed, clothed, and happy enough that their resentment and anger do not grow to unmanageable proportions.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was a Patrician born to wealth, understood this very clearly. He threw the poor enough crumbs to make them largely unreceptive to communist and fascist demagoguery. The Haves remained the Haves, even if they might have had to do without a seventh gold-plated toilet with automatic asswiper aboard their back-up yacht. His successors in the halls of power would do well to study his example.
The average wage used to be much higher. The minimum wage also used to be higher. The average wage for executives used to be much lower. Union membership used to be much higher.
There have always been closures, but were there more back then?
yes, there is plenty to go around, but only because people have worked to make it so, and they did this work because they would gain rewards from. Note this this is not the same as, “…they would be given rewards from it.” These rewards are not doled out by some committee; they arise as a natural consequence of the actions taken. If we impose a system where the rewards are decided by some other method, such as a group of people deciding what a particular work effort “deserves” then we make a grave misstep: we reward “persuading the committee” instead of “creating the wealth.”
You propose this because part of you feels quite confident that no matter how much you take from the productive, they will continue to produce to benefit the less productive. I don’t agree. I think our progress as a race has come from the fierce competition that exists as a natural consequence of the world, and we should not try to re-direct it otherwise; doing so will inevitably blunt our further progress.
It’s funny: the same people that are outraged when right-wing religious nuts try to stop teaching Darwin seem to ignore his lessons completely in the actual world. It’s great to teach our students that the advanced life we have on the planet today resulted from harsh conditions and competition, but we shouldn’t actually conclude that those conditions produce anything of value for humanity’s existence and progress.