-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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I would say that the "progressive" wing of a certain party has done an even better job of associating its policies and rhetoric with those ideas. Your so-called "neo-cons" are simply pointing out that fact.
Equal pay for equal work was never part of the Industrial age. One standard even upto the 1950's and still espoused by many is pay based on need. Statements such as, "That man needs a good paying job to support his family, so Miss go somewhere else to find a job or GET MARRIED" were common especially in any union workshop. The same applied to kids who often did more work that the adults.
Pay was often based on race, sex, age, education, appearance, religion and other factors unrelated to the actual amount of quality of work done. Equal pay for equal work may be a goal, but even now it is not universal even in highly industrialized nations.
Reminds me of my first days in a machine shop, back in '57.
I know that equal pay doesn't exist. It is said to, and in some jobs, it is required, but...
Unfortunately. And we get some strange results when laws substitute for sense in the marketplace, with incompetents protected because they are the only ones in a category getting equal pay, thus serve as shining examples of a company's attention to fairness in employment.
Charlie Self "Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air." Jack Benny
Why, it's word for word what you wrote, Charlie. I used it to point out that what the job is worth, is an arbitrary decision taken by the government in socialist states, the party in communist, or the unions in closed shops, and does not necessarily equate to what the laborer is worth. It is a straw woman to bring the "equivalent wage" and feminist rhetoric into the discussion.
The laborer has a skill set which s/he brings to the workplace. If the set is complicated, _and_ rare in the population, it is sound economics to compensate them at a higher rate of pay. If they move to another "job" in the same firm, are you saying they should be compensated differently? Economics would agree, but try to impose a pay cut, or even a pay freeze and see what happens.
More important than the skill set, which is sometimes learned on the job itself, is the work ethic of the individual, yet this often cannot be rewarded, paradoxically, because it is against the law. If , for example,
30 sick days a year are allowed, there are those who assume that these days are their right, not a privilege. They cost the enterprise a good deal more than others doing the same job. If a twenty minute break three times a day is authorized, there are those who take twenty minutes of transit time to get to the lunchroom rather than carry their thermos (used to frost me), or walk off based on the clock, not on the task. They cost the enterprise in the loss of their time, and often the loss of productivity in others.
So, it's not what the "job" is worth, but what the _individual_ is worth which counts. A company progresses by figuring this out, while to a union, it is anathema.
Obviously I was mocking the idea that everyone needs a "living wage" in Marxist terms. I thought even you would realize that. It's basic leftie dogma that no one needs more than some arbitrary "living" amount, therefore, they should return their ill-gotten gains to the state for redistribution. "From each ...."
Did you ever see _East_ German imports in the USA, or were they excluded by some McCarthyist hangover ? There were some pretty rough things made there in the last decades.
The way to spot a really old guy in a UK engineering workshop (if you can still find one of _them_) is to ask if they think US hand tools are something worth having.
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