Is it unethical to pay workers minimum wage (or below)? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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For discussion of moral and ethical issues.
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#14728031
What do wages have to do with ethics? An employer wants you to slave away as hard as possible for as low a wage as he can pay and a worker wants to do as little as is humanly possible for as much money you can trick your boss into giving you. I don't quite see where ethics come into it?
#14729478
Decky wrote:What do wages have to do with ethics?

Wages are set in the market, which is determined by ethically significant actions. For example, if slavery is legal (as in the antebellum South, or the modern compulsory US prison labor system), then workers have to compete with slave labor, which drives down their wages. Slavery is unethical, so the unethical political choice to make it legal reduces wages. Similarly, appropriation of land as private property without just compensation unethically deprives people of the opportunities to support themselves that they would otherwise have been at liberty to utilize. As a result, they are desperate to find employment because the alternative is starvation. Like slavery, this practice also reduces wages through unethical actions.
#14729497
It is no more or less unethical than people unionising in a bid to improve their wages. I'm with Decky on this one.

Of course, employers who pay terrible wages - usually while taking $500k a year home for themselves - are parasites and should be put up against a wall. But that's nothing to do with ethics. :)
#14737064
showeverything1 wrote:Why paying employees minimum wage unethical

What are your thoughts on paying hard working employees minimum wage? How about paying them below minimum wage?


showeverything1 wrote:
Why paying employees minimum wage unethical

What are your thoughts on paying hard working employees minimum wage? How about paying them below minimum wage?

Greed is immoral, as far as whether or not paying 'min wage' is or not, that's a different story, especially since min wage varies from state to state.

What do wages have to do with ethics? An employer wants you to slave away as hard as possible for as low a wage as he can pay and a worker wants to do as little as is humanly possible for as much money you can trick your boss into giving you. I don't quite see where ethics come into it?

Not sure which employer you're talking about, certainly not mine. If that's the type of company you work for, and the type of employees your company hires, you both have my sympathy.

Heisenberg wrote:It is no more or less unethical than people unionising in a bid to improve their wages. I'm with Decky on this one.

Of course, employers who pay terrible wages - usually while taking $500k a year home for themselves - are parasites and should be put up against a wall. But that's nothing to do with ethics.

That statement is self contradictory.

Essentially as you said was "yes they're bad people... but it has nothing to do with right and wrong".
#14737068
No, I said that employers are the enemies of employees' interests - which they are - but that it has nothing to do with some universal idea of "morality". It's just a fact. As Decky says, it is in an employer's interest to pay his employees as little as he can get away with, and to get them to work as many hours as he can get away with. It is in an employee's interest to secure himself the biggest wage he can for the least amount of work. Believe it or not, most people aren't all that thrilled to go into work each morning so that their boss can earn five or ten times their wage for a tenth of the effort.
#14737073
Decky wrote:An employer wants you to slave away as hard as possible for as low a wage as he can pay and a worker wants to do as little as is humanly possible for as much money you can trick your boss into giving you.

Are you not an employer Decky, do you never go to a hair dresser or mechanic, have you never employed a builder or a plumber? Have you never employed the services of an accountant or a lawyer? A friend of mine died of cancer recently, but in her last months she employed a number of my other friends to help her with her care needs. People employ me in various capacities, but I always desire to do a good job for them. What you say doesn't really make sense to me.
#14737094
Heisenberg wrote:No, I said that employers are the enemies of employees' interests - which they are - but that it has nothing to do with some universal idea of "morality". It's just a fact.

Um, yes... the hand that feeds you is the enemy... sure makes sense.

As Decky says, it is in an employer's interest to pay his employees as little as he can get away with, and to get them to work as many hours as he can get away with.

Thankfully normal people aren't entirely motivated by such base interests, we're talking humans here, not Fred and Rosemary west right?

It is in an employee's interest to secure himself the biggest wage he can for the least amount of work.

Who cares? There are a lot of things that are in my base interest and I happily ignore them, whether rape, murder, masturbation, or shoplifting.

Believe it or not, most people aren't all that thrilled to go into work each morning so that their boss can earn five or ten times their wage for a tenth of the effort.

That's their problem then, if they don't love their job they'd better learn to, or find a new one, because if they hate what they spend 40-50 hours every week doing then that's a pretty miserable life.
#14737096
Rich wrote:Are you not an employer Decky, do you never go to a hair dresser or mechanic, have you never employed a builder or a plumber? Have you never employed the services of an accountant or a lawyer? A friend of mine died of cancer recently, but in her last months she employed a number of my other friends to help her with her care needs. People employ me in various capacities, but I always desire to do a good job for them. What you say doesn't really make sense to me.

He's just talking pseudo-scientific "neoclassical economics". I've had more intelligent discussions with people who believe in warlocks, and that's no lie.
#14737417
How else to expect me to respond to that kind of nonsense? Employers who care about their workers? Employees who want to work hard and are not just there for the money? What planet are these people posting from?
#14737491
How else to expect me to respond to that kind of nonsense? Employers who care about their workers? Employees who want to work hard and are not just there for the money?

The US military, just off the top of my head.

What planet are these people posting from?


From Planet Earth. Sorry you live on the Death Star, but get some more real life experience instead of having that attitude toward life and then wondering why you never get promoted, have to scrape buy with the aid of welfare, and imagine the problem is "Republicans", or "racism", or whatever you blame for your own lot in life.

I have experience hiring people in small business situations, and if someone showed up with an attitude like yours you'd be laughed out of the interview.
#14737547
The US military, just off the top of my head.


:lol: An employer famous for its touching concern for its canon fodder.

From Planet Earth. Sorry you live on the Death Star, but get some more real life experience instead of having that attitude toward life and then wondering why you never get promoted, have to scrape buy with the aid of welfare, and imagine the problem is "Republicans", or "racism", or whatever you blame for your own lot in life.


You are the one with no real life experience rich boy. As for republicans sadly there are none here, all major and even most minor political parties are monarchists.

I have experience hiring people in small business situations, and if someone showed up with an attitude like yours you'd be laughed out of the interview.


:eh:

Well you obviously don't tell the employer "my aim is to do as little work as possible for as much money and I can trick you into giving me."

Anyway there is no such thing as in interview in building. You just rock up on the site and start working, if they like you then you stay for however long, if they don't you get told to fuck off after a couple of days.
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