Why is Labor different from any other Commodity?

If you do not understand inflation, than you have no business talking about economics at all. I suggest "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. It is about 300 years old, but describes to a T what can go wrong when bankers have direct control of the money supply. Every concern he addresses within the 1st few chapters plagues modern America. A read any genuine society would make part of their high school curriculum.

 

Inflation is a Government problem and not the problem of the Worker. It is the job of the Fed to control inflation and they are failing. What does that have to do with the modern worker and his (*)(*)(*)(*)ty attitude?

You ADAPT. You OVERCOME. You don't (*)(*)(*)(*)(*). You keep your mouth shut and you work that much harder to overcome the hurdles in life.

When my grandfather was an apprentice tool and dye maker for GM in the 40's he told me and I quote:

"You didn't have "rights". You a god (*)(*)(*)(*)ed indentured servant who kept his (*)(*)(*)(*) mouth shut until you EARNED the right to speak. You didn't question authority, you didn't question your boss, you did what you were told without complaint no matter how (*)(*)(*)(*)ty you thought the job was. You didn't have to like it, you just had to do it."

That attitude is what made America the world's leader.

Without that cultural attitude, we are NOTHING. We aren't worth a (*)(*)(*)(*) and our country and nation won't be worth a (*)(*)(*)(*).

The Mexicans understand it.

The Chinese understand it.

The Indians understand it.

Why don't Americans understand it anymore?

Let me put it to you in terms you might understand:

A fat ass 280 lbs ugly ass hooker is standing on a street corner and a John pulls up and asks how much? Do you think that fat ass hooker is able to charge per hour the same rate as a beautiful voluptuous Las Vegas Call Girl?

Hell NO. Her (*)(*)(*)(*)(*), her labor, is a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder and she can only get what the highest bidder would offer and cannot demand more.

In the modern day, the average wage earning laborer is the fat ass ugly ass hooker demanding Las Vegas Call Girl rates of pay!

 

Your English is hard to follow but if I think you are mistaken. I've seen the phrase appear many times in this thread alone.
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Those seem to be reasonable assertions. However, there doesn't seem to be anything inconsistent with the definition in describing the workers labor as a service provided to an employer. If that service is useful and easy to come by, then describing it as a commodity seems consistent with definition.

In short, while I have no problem with your view of the world, it doesn't seem to be the only valid one. And I don't see any conflict with what you are asserting and with the view that the labor a worker provides his employer can be a commodity.​

 

Not unlike the way variables in diamond grade, egg size, or fruit ripeness might effect price of those commodities.​

 

Well, it is a complex situation. I was raised never to take handouts. I always work, and pay my bills. Can never afford to do anything. On the job, I feel like the schmuck. All the people give half ass performances. They all get paid the same as me. Owners have their set rates for each position, know they will never fill every position with motivated people, so if you are one of the motivated you basically are the sucker in the room. As no one is expanding these days, so hopes of promotion are slim if not nil. After 18 years in the workforce, I can see completely why people would rather just have nothing and not work if they can get away with it, than work full time to still be poor at the end of the year.

College has become a serious scam these days. People are given money they shouldn't be lent. While being told college is about the "experience", and of course, drug through years of unnecessary schooling simply to suck the easy loans out of their hands and into the university's. The exact definition of a scam. If people aren't tricked and forced into losing money, that is robbery. College is a scam.

Our society has become a joke to anyone willing to see it, the only good thing being the escape provided by how technologically advanced it is. Video games, movies, etc. It does not surprise me people lose decades through these escapes, like baby boomers once did with drugs.

You think men won't leave the house and get a job now, wait until they invent robot chicks to screw.

Like it or lump it. For generations of Americans, a good, decent middle class living was almost guaranteed if you were willing to roll up your sleeves. That guarantee is now a thing of history books. People don't want to spend their whole lives working for a (*)(*)(*)(*) poor chance at being average. They would rather party their lives away. And to be honest, unless things start turning around for me soon, all I can do is salute them. So far, as my life is concerned, it looks like they are the smart ones.

 

I'm saying as far as history is concerned. You won't find the argument of "labor as a commodity" in a history book even 30 years old.

Labor is someone working for someone else.

Commodity is a product for sale on the market.

Labor, when being used interchangeably with workers, is not a commodity.​

 

The invisible hand through free market forces will not allow for labor to be underpaid in order to buy the products produced. There is no reason to produce things that cannot be bought.

 

But that is what is going on. Why the government is having to barrow money to supplement the economy left and right. The top wants their large demand, refuses to pay the wages that supplied it, refuse to pay the taxes that would make up for the loss of off shoring, so now we barrow 'til the dollar collapses.

 

I don't see how that's relevant. This is a debate forum, most of the arguments (at least the good ones) you find here aren't in any history books.
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I don't think anyone is suggesting that it is. We're talking about the labor that people produce, not workers themselves.​

 

Those who are arguing there is nothing wrong shipping all their jobs to China are. Maybe not exactly on this thread, but that is the womb to which the notion of "labor as a commodity" sprang forth. Labor is not new. It is a term 100s of years old. The term commodity is not new. It is a term 100s of years old. One must conclude that the fact labor is now suddenly a "commodity" is highly relevant in the scheme of things. And anyone who works for a living should be worried, with how bad of shape the working class of America is already in, of what lies ahead.

 

I find myself agreeing with most of what you said. The catch is, folks are able to give up in that way and still be comfortable with video games and maybe robot chicks, because of the momentum this country has built up over the decades.

As that momentum runs out, folks are going to find things a lot less comfortable.

 

The words "world" and "round" were here a long time before folks connected them.

But yea, folks who are offering nothing more than the same labor we can now easily get from other nations or automation should be worried. Same way hunters and gatherers got worried when farmers could do more for less than they could. Same way iron wrights and blacksmiths got worried when steel making advanced.

And if we as a nation keep subsidizing the folks who have been doing nothing more useful than saying "want fries with that?" for 40 years... well, we'll get to the point where the increasingly small minority that offer the creativity and innovation keeping this boat afloat just aren't enough anymore.

 

I have to disagree, it is used often. All contracting uses labor and materials for projects. You estimate your labor and mark it up for resale; thereby, contractors often resell labor.

Labor and Materials

http://cost.jsc.nasa.gov/instruct.html

 

C'mon. Wake up. Are you seriously going to compare people figuring out the world is round with labor being considered a commodity? Like the economists of the last couple hundred years couldn't have made such a connection. It is a way to justify the wrong of outsourcing. In fact, it absolute proof outsourcing is wrong, for if it wasn't, those who are pro-outsourcing wouldn't be on the hunt for justifications.

I take comfort in the fact those who outsource will be the reason the greatest market, America, collapses. Let them try and get rich off the Chinese. Penny wise, pound foolish.

I take comfort in the fact that all who work for a living in positions they deem safe from outsourcing, will either find their professions disappear(finance, etc.), or eventually see their own jobs outsourced themselves. Or people with their skill set moving here and working for cheaper.

You shouldn't diss restaurant workers. They have a skill that will always provide, even if the lowest on the totem pole. A lawyer who is willing to take anything will sit in a line of a thousand people all being denied a job at the local restaurant eventually.

 

Contractors aren't laborers. Nice try. The rules and regulations are completely different because of that fact. They are businessmen. Owners. They are selling a product.

 

There is a reason why they call some contracts labor only contracts, because the contract sold involves only labor, thus labor resold. The product they are selling is labor.

 

They are still contractors, not laborers. But as long as you don't consider workers commodities, I couldn't really care less.

 

Workers are not commodities, what they provide, i.e. labor, is.

 

Would you prefer the comment that the words "housing market" and "bubble" have been around a while? Things are always obvious, after the fact.

There's no proof in your statement and the sad truth is, American companies are already moving much of their focus to increasingly promising markets over seas. That's part of the issue regarding American companies repatriating funds from those markets. The burgeoning Chinese middle class is the new target market for many companies.

 

We're all selling a product. The only difference between a contractor and an employee is the expectation that the employer owes you something that the client doesn't. An increasingly unsafe expectation.

 

Ya know it just struck me why you seem to think this thread is about outsourxing and slavery. You are misunderstanding my use of labor as in the context of "big labor" or "labor" as "the labor force" I am not talking about that. I am discussing an individuals labor as a product he sells to his employer as in the context of "the fruit of his labor"

Labor is a product that someone sells when they don't have the capital to invest for themselves imo. I never meant labor as ppl man.

That is like saying a hooker who sells her ass is a slave.

 

Contractors can't collect unemployment when they lose their contract (job).
An employee can. I'm a contractor and one of these days I'm going to be left jobless and thus homeless with no government sponser program willing to help me unless I figure something out between now and then. I'm loosing my job to the internet I wouldn't need a government sponsered program to help me if we weren't in this (*)(*)(*)(*) recession and there were real jobs out there to be had. Obuma's fault.

 

Sounds like you entered a game of monopoly after all the properties had been sold/given away.

 

Everyone who works for a living should at least make a living. ie. have something to show for the effort. Otherwise why do it.

 

Because its a civic and moral duty and industrious labor is an end unto itself, much like education.

I swear teh wholesale abandonment of the Protestant Work Ethic is going to destroy the Western World. The Eastern cultures sure as hell haven't forgotten it