UH…yeah not working should not be an option…
Work is a social relation, rooted in the existence of capital. Work is the activity we perform when we sell our ability to do labour to someone else to make money - it’s involuntary, and is alien to our own needs and desires. Hunter-gatherer societies don’t “work”, and generally have no allotted time slots where they need to perform productive activity, but do it as they see fit in order to directly fulfill their own needs.
The employee is NOT dependent on his employer since he can quit, seek and obtain new employment, or start his own business.
He is dependant on all employers, which is what the kind of restrictions we’re describing apply to. If all of the employers in a given industry conspire to keep wages down, or wages in an industry are stagnant, then a worker has little other option. Even quitting and applying elsewhere isn’t a real option for many people.
It would be wrong if they were slaves, but we had a war ending that a long time ago.
So you do not think there is any onus on an employer at all to provide a decent wage or decent working conditions?
LOL people have had children since the beginning of time and that will never change. That is a ridiculous argument.
Current rates of population growth isn’t a given thing, it only began around the 19th century. Birth rates in the developed world are at an all time low. There are already lots of demographic issues in developed countries because women are choosing to forego children in favour of their careers. Employers don’t like people who drop out halfway through their time working to have children, and it’s hard for women to return to their careers afterwards. Children also just generally get in the way of work. All of this has contributed to women in developed countries having less children.
This thread is about a so called “fair wage”. My point has always been that what is “fair” varies among people.
So what? Lots of laws enforce things based on potentially arbitrary or subjective ideas of what is “fair”, “equal”, “good”, etc. The whole idea of lawmaking in liberal democratic countries is that some consensus is reached on what these standards are and is enforced through the law.
Secondly if any employer is for some reason not paying a high enough wage…
This just seems naïve. Most work today is unskilled drudgery. It’s hard to see why capitalists would fight over “good” workers in industries like the service sector or even most manufacturing industries, where there’s a high division of labour and basically anybody can be taught to do the menial tasks they’re put to for eight hours a day. On top of this there’s no reason to think that capitalists wouldn’t just conspire to keep wages low, or that there would be higher waged work available.
I am a retired CPA. Now I do some other things, but I make most of my money as a real estate investor/landlord.
This doesn’t really surprise me at all. I think that’s an incredibly parasitic position to be in, so I’m not surprised you’re drawn to condemning others for supposedly stealing tax money or whatever.
