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Cruciferi
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- Start working at Minimum Wage $8-$10/Hour
- Learn a Trade or go to College and start earning $15/Hour
- Get certifications or promotions and earn $20 or More/Hour
What Is a Just Wage?
- Thread starter blackforest
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PetraG
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The surest route to another flirtation with communism and other secular efforts to collectivize wealth is to protect the exercise of greed as much as possible. This is about what is just, but those who want to protect their wealth had also better figure out that when the poor decide to simply rise up and take what is theirs because they are tired of waiting for the day the wealthy will act justly of their own accord is (a) a nasty and often a violent business that gets a lot of innocent people killed that (b) does not work and (c ) will lead to
a world of suffering before the experiment is once again over.
"Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest 1% of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today.
Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13% since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2%. The number of billionaires rose at a rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017.
This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over.
The Oxfam report states that it takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year."
a world of suffering before the experiment is once again over.
Explain why the wage gap we have is necessary so that wages can be “sustained,” please.
"Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest 1% of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today.
Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13% since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2%. The number of billionaires rose at a rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017.
This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over.
The Oxfam report states that it takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year."
Are you too snarky to eat burgers, or do you habitually look down on all the people who make minimum wage doing work that benefits you? It is fine to call a line cook a line cook, but it wouldn’t kill anybody to show some respect for anybody willing to work for a living at honest work.
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Le_Cracquere
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Whatever you think a “just wage” is, let us suppose that I cannot afford to retain an employee at that wage. Which would be more just:
A) Hire no one at all
B) Hire someone at less than the threshold of a “just wage”
If we go with A), I’m not paying anyone starvation wages … but it very possibly means that, rather than being underpaid, that person is unemployed and altogether penniless. Is the latter condition preferable? More to the point, does that alternative make me more just than if I had hired him?
A) Hire no one at all
B) Hire someone at less than the threshold of a “just wage”
If we go with A), I’m not paying anyone starvation wages … but it very possibly means that, rather than being underpaid, that person is unemployed and altogether penniless. Is the latter condition preferable? More to the point, does that alternative make me more just than if I had hired him?
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Pup7
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Bit of a sidebar here, but I have more respect for the guy at the grill in Waffle House than I do for the surly teenager treating me like a second class citizen in line at McDonald’s. A line cook is hard work that I’m very blessed to have never had to do. And to me, the guy at Waffle House is worth more than that surly teenager at Mickey D’s. He actually needs to be able to cook. A good line cook is just about worth their weight in gold, and I mean nothing by that. I actually enjoy watching a team at Waffle House that enjoys working together. It’s like poetry in motion when that happens, and the food is usually really good as a result.
I have far more respect for those folks. And I tip them very well to boot.
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blackforest
Well-known member
I would argue that practicing Catholics are not in a good position to run a business if they can’t build a just wage into their operating expenses. It unnerves a lot of people to hear that, and those who argue that it’s “unrealistic” (for small businesses, at least), in many ways make a valid point. But wouldn’t it be nice if Catholics could influence policy changes that better enable us to run our businesses AND practice our faith by paying just wages? That’s the conversation that I’d like to see taking place.
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PetraG
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Thanks for the correction. A restaurant line cook is a skilled position and isn’t the same work as someone taught to work a fast-food grill.
Having said that, I have no idea what sort of demeanor the people working the grills at McDonald’s have. They do stay busy back there. They don’t have the skill level of someone working at a restaurant where the food is cooked with finesse, but they still do work that deserves respect simply because people want the fruit of the labor and someone has to do it.
That is not to say that everyone in the restaurant business is a reliable worker. It is to say there is no honest work that deserves to be looked down on. Low skill work that isn’t hazardous usually does not merit the same pay deserved by those with more skill, particularly those who had to delay gratification and actually pay to go to school in order to work hard and get those skills, gaining more skills and earning higher placement by being reliable at progressively more difficult jobs, but it is still work, it still produces something worthwhile, it is still an honest way to make a wage, and it ought to be respected for that much.
In other words, I’m not saying all work deserves the same status or the same pay. Some people have to do more praiseworthy things to get the position they gain. They weren’t born able to do what they can do; they had to work to gain their skills. No, I’m only saying that even the least-skilled work is worth doing well and reliably and deserves respect as a necessary part of making society run. People who do it ought to be able to eat and have a roof over their heads without going hat in hand to charity or government subsidy while the owners of the business that employs them join the handful of people who have cornered most of the world’s wealth. There is a point at which the pursuit of profit does become an act of greed by which wealth is amassed at the expense of those who produced the wealth. The Old Testament prophets decried that, the Letter of James decried that, and it isn’t just.
It isn’t “communism” or “socialism” to say so. That is the plain meaning of Judeo-Christian morality and it has been for millennia. We moderns didn’t “outgrow” economic morality just because we bank electronically.
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Loud-living-dogma
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$40k …hmm, do you mean for one person, or a family? What if you are a faithful Catholic with 5,6,7 or more children?
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Cruciferi
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It Depends where you live obviously. However, a single person would be quite comfy with $40K/Year in my area.
Both spouses will have to work. Earning a combined $80K/Year would be more than sufficient in my area. However, people don’t usually have families of that size anymore.
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Loud-living-dogma
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Well yeah, what’s the percentage of Catholics that use birth control? 80% or more?Loud-living-dogma:
It Depends where you live obviously. However, a single person would be quite comfy with $40K/Year in my area.
Both spouses will have to work. Earning a combined $80K/Year would be more than sufficient in my area. However, people don’t usually have families of that size anymore.
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Cruciferi
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Manufacturing jobs are disappearing and jobs that could support a large family are all but gone. My grandfather worked on the Railroad and my Father worked in a Steel Mill. It’s all gone now… Anyone considering marriage better have a decent job and career first!
blackforest
Well-known member
It’s tiered pricing. Usually catalogs and websites practice it by charging you according to your personal shopping habits. Warren Buffet will likely get charged more than you for, say, the same pair of gloves on the fictitious snootystuff(dot)com if he already uses his billions to shops there habitually. So at least indirectly, economic means are a factor. Whether or not it’s ethical is another question for perhaps another thread.
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Pup7
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The only “minimum wage job” I’ve ever worked was work study in college (back then it was $4.25 an hour), which technically doesn’t qualify in my book as I was also a full time student. And really, it was easy work and a bit posh. I am lucky, and I know it. And I thank God for it - and not as much as I should, really.
Even when I was enlisted 20 years ago living in the dorms I brought home just above minimum wage ($414 a paycheck - I’ll never forget it) but the health care alone was worth at least that a month, even in that economy back then.
And the Armed Forces - and there’s nothing wrong with that third option. You’re better off in here as unskilled labor than you are on the outside as a civilian. I’ve seen many kids who barely scraped by in high school become successful noncommissioned officers in the senior enlisted ranks (one of my brothers is one of them, God bless him and God bless the Army, as I have no idea what would’ve happened to him had he not had that option).
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Pup7
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And when you look at the job market and the cost of living, it’s easy to understand why.
blackforest
Well-known member
I actually agree here. There’s an “educational inflation” phenomenon going on these days, and I’m not just talking about the cost of a degree. When everybody is being compelled to get a degree, even for things like construction management that can and should be learned on the job, degrees become the new high school diploma. That doesn’t speak well of our high schools, does it?
For job training, high schools can’t have enough vocational training programs. I’ve seen high schools offer in-house beauty schools, as well as programs in welding and culinary arts. These programs are often on the chopping block with state budget cuts, and that’s a crying shame. College should be something that people want to do for specialized careers like law, medicine, and education. It shouldn’t be a requirement to get most any kind of non-entry-level job.
For job training, high schools can’t have enough vocational training programs. I’ve seen high schools offer in-house beauty schools, as well as programs in welding and culinary arts. These programs are often on the chopping block with state budget cuts, and that’s a crying shame. College should be something that people want to do for specialized careers like law, medicine, and education. It shouldn’t be a requirement to get most any kind of non-entry-level job.
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Cruciferi
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Working at a Pizza shop is great because you can make yourself some food. You won’t be rich but you won’t starve either.
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Pup7
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I know if you don’t dump your cookies when you’re browsing for airline tickets, the cost goes up (and that’s been proven to me and is also discussed on a huge travel forum I belong to - the more you browse, the more the prices edge up - so I browse without logging in first and then dump cookies) - but I’ve never heard of places like Amazon doing that. The Amazon screenshots in that article show one item offered via Prime and one item not offered via Prime. I’ve seen that for decades - literally - and I don’t think it has to do with cookies or past history - it has to do with Prime vs not Prime and it’s comparing two different sellers. So that point isn’t valid.
Everyone knows that stuff is more in an airport and more at Disneyworld and I don’t think it has as much to do with “executive status” as it does this: you are a captive audience, and the airport knows that. The one place this tends to be less true is DFW, as Tarrant County has a law that states if the same business exists outside of the confines of DFW (say, Starbucks or TGIFriday’s), you have to charge the same price inside DFW that you charge outside of DFW. It makes flying through Texas far more pleasant, and I admit that I plan routes on my preferred carrier just to fly through DFW and it’s partially for that reason.
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Pup7
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I was on a meal plan on scholarship.Working at a Pizza shop is great because you can make yourself some food. You won’t be rich but you won’t starve either.
I ate better than the pizza delivery guy, trust me.
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Pup7
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Nor does it speak well of our universities, either - be they Ivy League, another elite, or state-supported. It cheapens everything.
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KMC
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Catholics are not immune to economics and market dynamics. The CCC clearly discusses balance between the needs of the worker and the state of the business (along with the contributions of the worker). It seems to me that a Catholic business owner, when balancing the worker / business equation laid out in the CCC to the best of their ability, is not doing anything wrong or immoral when not paying a living wage if they are unable to do so.
I would much rather have faithful Catholic business owners thinking through these considerations and falling short of a living wage, than to extrapolate the CCC to mean “either you pay living wages or stay out of business”. You will end up with all non-Catholic business owners paying no attention to CCC, and workers will be worse off.
I would much rather have faithful Catholic business owners thinking through these considerations and falling short of a living wage, than to extrapolate the CCC to mean “either you pay living wages or stay out of business”. You will end up with all non-Catholic business owners paying no attention to CCC, and workers will be worse off.
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DarkLight
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We helped “dispose of” a lot of food at college sometimes. They’d serve big dinners and then officially the kitchen staff would be told to throw away the rest. Usually whatever student workers were around helped ourselves to anything we liked.
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