Brylowes
Well-Known Member
There’s a word for when a company/corporation make vast profits ‘yet still
Fail to pay their employees a wage they can live on ......slavery.
Money in football (9 Viewers)
- Thread starter AStonesThrow
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Fail to pay their employees a wage they can live on ......slavery.
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
Technically slavery is not paying them at all. Not paying them enough is exploitation.
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
This thread seems to have prompted a publication by the Institute for Fiscal Studies
How do other countries raise more in tax than the UK? -
How do other countries raise more in tax than the UK? -
Interesting. The thing is though, nobody can agree on whether we ought to be higher or lower on that list. Should tax revenue as a share of national income be higher and more in line with France, Germany and Italy; or, should it be lower in line with the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland etc. What does it actually mean?
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
There probably isn't any objective rule, but I'd suggest a country with 9 of the 10 poorest regions in the developed part of northern Europe (i.e. minus the former soviet states) isn't getting it right.
robbiekeane
Well-Known Member
What don’t you understand? Labour will be paid the value that’s it’s worth...if it’s too low no one with do it. If it’s too high there I’ll be many people fighting for the position driving the price of labour down.
If you want more pay, need more skill....
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
But in that case why aren't we massively upping the wages of teachers and nurses, or even doctors? Massive shortfall in these positions but get very little. Meanwhile tons of people try and fight to be an MP, which requires no minimum level of knowledge, expertise or experience. They get huge payrises and remuneration/pension benefits? The economic logic would suggest we should be reducing the pay to thin out the competition and leave only those who genuinely want the job?
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
That’s not true though. The cost of labour is the cost of living. Just because you can exploit others doesn’t make it right. I can run a “business” stealing all my stock from you and selling it cheap. But we accept that’s morally wrong. We don’t live in Mad Max and markets aren’t truly free.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Standard right wing theory of pay:
Poor people: pay them less to keep competitiveness in business otherwise they’ll be lazy
Rich people: pay them more or they won’t want to work because they’re so talented and not at all lazy.
When you realise that most right wing political theory just goes as deep as “I’d like more money please” an awful lot makes sense.
See also trickle down economics, austerity in recessions, and the laughable Laffer curve. An entire economic theory based on fag packet maths and stoner thoughts.
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Give it a couple of years ...
Standard right wing theory of pay? Behave, there's no such thing. Trickle down economics, who advocates that anymore anyway? It died in the 80s and is now just a left wing fantasy (but yes, I guess there are a few that do).
Any ideology can be dumbed down in a couple of paragraphs like this. It doesn't make you right, but it doesn't make you wrong either. I could easily post a soundbite or a couple of witty proverbs mocking socialism, but what does it prove? It's meaningless.
It's like when somebody asks the question of how many people fled from West to East Germany? All good knockabout stuff if we're trying to score points, but it doesn't really mean anything.
Brylowes
Well-Known Member
So it’s ok that a Football Club can afford to pay a Footballer £200.000 P/W
Yet needs a Government subsidy to top up a cleaners pay to £250 P/W
I don't think anyone is saying it is OK, they're simply saying how and why it is.
A footballer earning 200K per week is also paying around 75K per week in tax. So the Government subsidy (I suspect you mean tax credits) is ultimately paid for by the wealthiest, given that 90% of tax revenue (income based) comes from the top 50% of earners.
The minimum wage should be looked at I agree. It is frustrating when you use certain examples, Tesco for example, because they could most definitely pay more. But you can't have different levels of minimum wage applied to different companies and many small businesses wouldn't be able to cope with a huge hike in minimum wage and would likely fail or shed jobs.
That was the whole point of tax credits, to help bridge this gap. It was just about the only good thing Gordon Brown did.
Sky Blue Pete
Well-Known Member
Yep the theory was bang on I agree
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
Yes it can be 'dumbed down' into a simplistic soundbite for either side but often those are the most effective ways of pointing out the flaws and fallacies of a system. You go into the detail and you can blind and confuse people with too much information, as is often done deliberately in a condescending "you don't understand" manner.
The principles behind trickle down economics are still very much evident in capitalist thinking, just the term isn't used because of the discredited nature of it.
But the general point that was being made was largely true - economic theory used to reason why wages are set how they are is largely ignored (and in many cases totally reversed) when the conversation turns from workers wages to management/directors.
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
I agree. The thing that should determine the minimum wage should be living costs - the criteria being can you afford to live off it? But of course then you just end up getting people charging more for things and you end up in a vicious circle of inflation.
It's why the idea of a 'citizens wage' is flawed - all that will happen is companies will look at this new source of income and increase their prices accordingly. The same problems exist just at a more expensive level. Which then means the only means of control is price capping/regulation which is restricting the market mechanics. Which brings in the argument that they should therefore be nationalised under government control.
It's a highly convoluted problem, but the overriding reason behind it is greed.
robbiekeane
Well-Known Member
What on earth are you talking about?
The cost of anything is what people are willing to pay for it. Nothing to do with the cost of living?
robbiekeane
Well-Known Member
Because, rightly or wrongly, people are still willing to work and pick up the slack for the same shitty wages.
If they weren’t, and every teacher quit or went into other professions because the money wasn’t good enough, the wages would go up.
Healthcare is different
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
The problem with that argument being that it's well known that there is a chronic shortage of teachers and there are lots of teaching positions left unfilled. Teacher turnover and retention of young teachers just after finishing training is extremely poor. I agree that there are a lot of diligent teachers who are picking up the slack and are essentially being exploited for their commitment.
robbiekeane
Well-Known Member
Well then wages or incentives will go up won’t they..
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
So why haven't they gone up in line with MP pay and incentives, a job which is massively oversubscribed in terms of applicants? Despite numerous calls from within the sector and in general from the public to remunerate teachers better?
If the government are using the same criteria, and favour a market based system, teachers wage increases should be massively outstripping MP's.
capel & collindridge
Well-Known Member
Was it the CT that tipped them off?
robbiekeane
Well-Known Member
Oh god I feel a bit bad...You really don’t understand do you?
It’s not something the government are “using” or they “favour”...it’s just how markets naturally work....
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
What market for MPs are you referring to?
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
No it doesn't. It's not the number there are - it's the number of how many there need to be and how many people apply.
All the positions for MP's are filled and there are many times more that 'apply' to become one every election. All the positions for teachers aren't filled and the number of applicants for each available position is lower.
The economics suggests that therefore MP wages should be going down because the market is oversubscribed whereas teachers wages should be increasing to attract more applicants. But that isn't happening. MP wages are going up vastly more than teachers are.
I know that these aren't market driven roles (except for private schools where teachers do earn more) but I'm highlighting the difference in how wages are looked upon depending on the position. Top positions - should pay more to get the best and motivate them. Lower positions - should pay as cheap as possible to maintain competition in the market, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
I wasn't happy with the use of those terms because it's not a market in the true sense - teacher pay/increases are largely determined by government and funds they allocate to education. MP pay is also not set by a market but by parliamentary committee.
But we supposedly have a very capitalist/market driven ethos, especially in a Tory government so you would've thought they'd take those principles on board when deciding things like public sector pay rises. However they seem to ignore it and go completely against what market forces would suggest if it suits them.
When a shelf stacker at Aldi pays more than an auxiliary nurse , we got a problem!
The whole system is fucked, we allow companies that earn massive amounts of profit to pay fuck all tax, give their employees shitty contracts and do nothing about it... then we hammer the shit out of the small business that are trying to build a stable base for this country and provide for their families , because they are easier to extract the Money from than trying to chase the companies earning the big money with smart solicitors. Then we we wonder why our high streets are like ghost towns. Apart from a Starbucks and Costa every corner. We pay nurses and firemen etc fuck all, because the people that do those jobs do it because they genuinely care & pay government officials ten fold the wages of nurses to pretty stiff us all. It’s a joke.
Rant
Over
The whole system is fucked, we allow companies that earn massive amounts of profit to pay fuck all tax, give their employees shitty contracts and do nothing about it... then we hammer the shit out of the small business that are trying to build a stable base for this country and provide for their families , because they are easier to extract the Money from than trying to chase the companies earning the big money with smart solicitors. Then we we wonder why our high streets are like ghost towns. Apart from a Starbucks and Costa every corner. We pay nurses and firemen etc fuck all, because the people that do those jobs do it because they genuinely care & pay government officials ten fold the wages of nurses to pretty stiff us all. It’s a joke.
Rant
Over