In the case of any business with employees, the fact that the hardest work is done by the lowest on the totem pole, and those lowest often do not get out of their situation, leads me to believe business is somewhat immoral.
My parents owned a business, and in the case of small businesses at least, the owner usually works the hardest.
There is work in a boss making conditions right for the employees to have a job in the first place. But remember, the boss draws a salary. Each year he gets better at handling his financial risk and he gets better at making conditions right for the employees. Why should he continue to get the lion’s share of the profit? Because he who has the gold makes the rules.
As for being self-employed, the tax benefits are obvious. Due to taking on risk, the self-employed get tax breaks which employees earning the same amount of money for somebody else do not get. Only the taking on of risk is the difference. But that risk becomes easier because you get used to it.
Why should he take the lion’s share of the profit? Well, if the business fails, the employees still made their salaries, whereas he lost both his labor and his capital. Maybe he makes a big profit, but maybe he works a year and has nothing to show for it or works a lifetime and watches the whole thing go down the drain in a year. There aren’t any guarantees in business. (Surely you
know that?)
Besides, sometimes there is no way for a single laborer to run the enterprise that suits their talents, let alone start it up. Modern hospitals and factories couldn’t be started or run by one person who does all the work on top of all the administration.
Other people cannot sleep at night with the kind of risk that business owners make.
I think the point was that the boss’s job can steadily be getting easier, while his income is increasing at a rate far exceeding the rate at which the wages of the staff (whose jobs are not getting easier) are increasing.
Ideally you’d have more of a connection between effort and reward.
The boss’s job can steadily be getting easier? What’s the guarantee of that? If the employees steal from work, who are they stealing from? The business owner! What if they loiter around and get paid for not working? Who are they stealing from? The business owner! Employees can exploit their position, too, and it is unfortunately not uncommon that they don’t feel a bit of scruples about doing it.
If the OP is talking more about the flippers who are primarily taking advantage of rising housing costs in an area, then IMO it is immoral. People need somewhere to live, like they need food. Those house flippers are a bit like the powerful in a famine-stricken country who use their position to make a profit from food sent there as aid for the hungry.
Um, no, a lot of times they’re taking a house that no one wants to live in and doing the work and applying the expertise to make it a place someone does want to live in.
