Just some thoughts that have been running around in my head for a while. This is in response to some of the ideas that I have been reading about on the forums. This has to do with who is productive, who is not, and who deserves more of a salary depending on the productiveness of their labor. Physical labor as it's name implys is work that you do with you hands, feet, eyes, or something else where you are building something tangable. A factory worker that builds cars, or a produce worker that picks vegetables is a good example of that sort of job. Physical labor productivity is measured in how many units per hour. It might be how many car doors per week, or ears of corn per day, but it consists of a quantity per hour measurement of some sort. In this type of system, it is easy to compare two workers doing the same job, and seeing who is more productive, and possible worthy of a raise if they are doing a really good job. Higher productivity means more profit for the company. Physical labor is inherently limited. Because of the constraints of the human body, no matter how good or how fast you might get at your job, eventually there will come a point where you can no longer produce more widgets per hour, with the same number of people. Mental labor is an entirely different matter, and much more difficult to quantify. This is because you cannot measure an idea, or brain power in thoughts per day. The human mind simply does not work that way. While the man that builds the car might build 50 car doors per hour, the man that designed the car in the first place might have worked hundreds of man hours, but on some given days... might not have worked much at all. And that is OK for a mental labor job. There is a specific reason for this. Mental labor is not limited to the strength or speed of my body to do work. While a factory worker can only make so many car doors a day, a car designer may come up with a particular car DESIGN that will sell millions of cars! And here is the interesting thing. If that car designer does nothing for 11 months out of the year, but on the 12th month of the year designs a car that sells millions of units, then he is just as productive as if he had worked 9 to 5 every day for the entire year! For mental labor it is the final result to the company profit that is the measure of productivity. So that means in terms of actual revenue generated for the company, a car designer may generate a 100 times the revenue to a car company as the man who is putting doors on cars every day. This is not saying that either job is unimportant. Just that they are measured differently. But if you look at it from the point of view of who generates the most revenue for a company, mental labor is always far more profitable to the company than physical labor. A salesman is another great example of what I am trying to illustrate here. If a salesman sells no products for 360 days of the year, but on day 361 sells a 10 millions dollar order, then in terms of produtivity for the company, on that one day he is literally more productive than 100's of other workers put together. So my thinking is.... if someone is more productive than 100's of workers put together, then he should get paid... much....much more than the standard worker at a company! And that is why engineers, designers, lawyers, and CEO's make the very large salaries that they do. Because even if they are not physically productive on a day to day basis. The deals or ideas they are putting together during the year bring tremendous revenue into a company.
So you're smarter than the hundreds of people who work at said company, and therefore, you "deserve" hundreds of times more". That what you're saying?
In my opinion productivity is measured simply by what something is capable of selling for on average. If you have a designer who designs 1 car in a year, and you have 3 car companies bidding on that design he deserves the highest bidder. If you have a laborer who builds 50 car doors in a day, he deserves the wage of the highest bidding factory *for his employment*. I say that because some laborers work harder than others, some are smarter than others, and not every laborer deserves $50/hour just because joe schmoe landed a extremely generous job. This is really where the idea of currency came from. People bartering with eachother, trading on their own or as a group to come to an agreement, *without force*, of a fair price. People offering outrageous prices never sold anything, and people offering dirt cheap currency for high value items never bought anything. We came up with currency simply to make this bartering system more smooth. And what is a bartered item worth, if not what it sold for? If a man pays $100 for a peice of jewelry, I'd like to think it is worth at least $100 *to him*, and the seller thought it was worth at most $100 aswell. Likewise with a laborer, I'd like to think he believes his wage is fair price at the most. Otherwise he shouldn't have taken it. And the employer should believe his wage is a good deal, at least. Otherwise they shouldn't have hired him.
Lawyers are paid more because the system is stacked in their favor, they don't have to think. Designers and engineers have to have talent to succeed, but I'm still waiting for just one that can move 5000 cartons a day with their mind.
Cartons of what? Milk? Cigarettes? I'm sure there is some engineer who can be given credit for designing a fork lift or truck or airplane or train that has moved many orders of magnitude more than 5,000 cartons a day of whatever commodity we're discussing.
Personally I think that "skillfully" operating a laptop, and planning three martini lunches while simultaneously (multi tasking) carving up America for the top 1%, constitutes CEO material, and should be rewarded handsomely.
Cartons of any product. Someone can, and has, developed remote forklifts, but they can't discriminate between products. There are few retailers that deal with only one product or vendor. There has to be someone to ship and receive the freight.
An unfortunate reality confronting the corporate tycoons, having to pay a labor cost. They're working hard on the solution though, I'm sure. The new CEO should be able to shave that understaffed crew down by at least 40% by the end of the first quarter.
This thread feeds into my opinion that 51% of the solution to any problem is coming up with the right solution. The other 49% is actually solving it. You can't solve a problem until someone thinks up the proper solution- until then, any action taken is a wasted effort and does not solve the problem. In this regard, thinking yourself out of a problem is the most important thing you can do to solve it.
Not what I said at all. But if I find a way to contribute to company profits that is hundreds of times greater than other employees... then why should I not be paid so much more than them? I would feel the same way about a person that comes up with a way to SAVE a company millions of dollars with their idea. It all has to do with how much did you actually contribute to the bottom line of the company?
You mean like the trains that engineers have designed to do that on a very small amount of fuel? Yup.... engineers have done that too....
That's a new one for me, even as someone who is relatively well-versed in the usual hack statements of lawyer-haters. Please explain to me (1) what "system" you are referring to, (2) how it is "stacked" in lawyers' favor, and (3) why/how you justify your statement that lawyers "don't have to think." As someone else has pointed out, if they design a machine that moves 5000 cartons a day, they've done that. I'm quite positive whatever your job is/was, it would not exist without engineers and other "thinking" jobs that made it possible. The human body has the ability to both think and do. Both thinking and doing can accomplish work. It is folly to get into some ridiculous argument claiming that one thing or the other is not "work." If your employer or customer is willing to pay you for what you are doing for them, it's work. Period. And the market determines how much that work is worth.
You had me until you bunched together Engineers and designers with CEO's. Rarely do CEO's have a specific stake in their companies ground level operations. The Tech world has seen that type of ingenuity by CEO's (Gates, Jobs, etc), but in most corporations, the CEO is a great organizer of talent and ideas. Sure, in many cases, they make important big picture decisions, help appropriate funding for programs and staff, and manage key executive positions and placement, but most micromanagement falls on the next few tiers down, where managers (far less paid managers) micromanage ideas and innovation, that gets passed up and credited to higher, more well paid execs. So the question is, should the HR/Finance people get paid more than the innovators they hire? In the current environment, that is the case. I think the problem with our society right now, and the problem that has grown into epidemic is not so much that an assembly line worker gets paid near minimum wage to do labor, but the fact that CEO's and executives are now getting paid 100's of times what their engineers and inventors are getting paid. The moving goal posts in our society that are causing the most derision right now aren't between the upper middle class and the lower middle class, its the fast increasing gap between upper middle class and elite. That gap has grown far larger than before. If it continues, then even the upper middle class (the ones giving the ideas and laying the foundation for the "physical labor" class) will be struggling to maintain the "thinking mans lifestyle" of living. I find it impossible to believe that CEO's and execs working 3 days a week or less "earn" the 100's of times more wealth they take in than the overworked, over stressed thinkers that are one or two tiers below them doing MOST of the "thinking" work. I live in Caterpillar country (Peoria, IL) and the few lower management people (not elite management people) I talk to, along with the large group of engineers I know (every other house in my town belongs to a CAT employee) will tell you that the majority of the companies success comes from that engineer to lower management sweet spot, people not getting paid like executives and people that have seen their wealth decrease relative to inflation and the changing environment. There is so much ingenuity and success at those levels that gets claimed by the upper tier, simply because that upper tier "organizes" from a distant office without much micromanagement. The definition of "fat cats" comes to mind when I think about the wealth THEY take, simply because they sit in positions with access to the check the writers. From what I hear from my friends is that most meetings involve an exec meeting over conference call with a team of engineers and lower managers, and that exec simply checks in to track progress, and then motivates the workers to meet the deadlines and come up with ALL of the solutions, not offering anything more than pressure and accountability. Apparently, the ability to put pressure and accountability on the thinkers is what earns the largest piece of the pie. Imagine if Thomas Edison or Henry Ford had been working in the lower level of a major corporation back in the day. We'd probably never have heard their name, but some Exec would be taking credit for their efforts, while enslaving them with just enough for a decent standard of living without too many complaints. That's my problem with Corporate America right now.
The differences in wages for physical labor v mental labor are simply a matter of supply and demand. Literally millions of individuals can physically hang a car door on and attach the door with bolts. There are far fewer individuals that have the schooling and knowledge to design the door. Since the auto manufacturing company requires both they pay more for the mental labor than the physical labor because of the difference in "supply" related to each. There is really nothing magical or mysterious about it. Top CEO's, for example, receive huge compensation packages because there is far more demand for individuals that have the specific knowledge to run a large corporation than there are individuals that have this knowledge. There is extensive competition between large corporations for the very limited number of top CEO's.
Again, thats not as true as it used to be. Right now, there are huge demands in the work force for physical laborers, while a huge grouping of college educated employees are struggling to find "thinking" jobs. With the recent explosion of higher education in the last two generations, we've created a massive group of "thinkers" that won't do physical jobs. And your point doesn't approach the gap between those thinkers and elite, CEO level thinkers, where luck, connections and inherited elitism tends to still make the difference between the upper middle class and elite class. Again, there are millions of educated "thinkers", yet only a few thousand of those, even among the BEST ones, will ever see an elite level class. That gap is nearly insurmountable in the modern day and age. And every time I see a CEO anointed as a family member or friend of other elites, thats 1000's of actually people that might have earned the position that got passed over for the wrong reasons.
If I think about responding to this thread, is that as valuable as actually typing it? I think I agree with the premise but not the conclusion of the OP. There are a lot of different ways for people to contribute. For some people it's physical labor, for others it's creativity, and for the lucky few there's always porn. But I disagree that a person's value should then be indexed to the profit that they generate for some capitalist enterprise. The most important job I'm aware of is motherhood, which pays less than nothing.
Problem is you CEO types find that "profit" through the attrition of other people's lives. Effectively, you cut other people's jobs, and then take a cut for yourself. CEO's don't come in and congratulate everybody for "doing a good job" and reward the employees. THEY CUT. That's what they do. Our jobs are THEIR bonuses. Quite simply, that's how it works. Your job is to take other people's jobs for PROFIT. Please...at least admit that much!
Supply and demand still dictate wages. Admittedly there are over a million hourly manufacturing jobs that have gone unfilled for the the last several years but these are not "ditch digging" manual labor jobs. They're technical manufacturing jobs where knowledge and skills are both required to do the work. We have gotten away from teaching technical skills as our education system focused on college degrees. Simply having a college degree does not imply that a person has knowledge that is in demand. Someone with a college degree in cultural anthropology, for example, has very limited demand in the market and they are totally incapable of being a technical laborer. By "elite" I assume "wealthy" is being implied. The wealthy can afford to send their children to the right schools and provide mentorship that established the knowledge necessary to run a large corporation. Not all top CEO's come from wealth though and my general belief is that it's actually a small percentage of CEO's. Steve Jobs was not from the "elitist" class nor was Bill Gates when he was CEO of Microsoft. Phil Condit, the former CEO of Boeing worked his way up to that starting out as a drafter. Alan Mulally, the CEO of the Ford Motor Company had very common roots parents. Successful CEO's learn the trade which is a very specific trade and there are very few really qualified CEO's of large corporations. Usually when we see the children of the wealthy they turn out more like Paris Hilton than they do like Alan Mulally.
Then the solution is simple.... there may come a day where I choose to withhold my mind from them. Read a book about it once.... it was rather enlightening...
Sigh..... as mighty and powerful as any CEO can become, they cannot force you to work for them. When you agree to work for a company it is for mutual benefit of both. If the employee is not happy with the working conditions or pay, he can leave at any time, and the employer has no recourse. If the employer is no longer happy with the quality of work, the employer can fire the employee, and the employee has little to no recourse. Either party can walk away at any time. So if an employee is claiming exploitation.... why not leave? So in short if you take a job that really sucks... it is YOUR fault.... get out of there and find something bette to do. Maybe start your own company if you think you can do it better.
Glad you didn't argue the fact that CEO's are headhunters, and not some form of royalty that must have their a**es kissed by all. Thanks for that much anyway. CEO's will have your job.........SOON, working people. All of them...
There are times when the owner of a company does not produce either.... Walt Disney for example had little to do with the creation of Mickey Mouse The character was created by Disney's head artist, Ub Iwerks. Disney did small changes and edits to the character, such as adding white gloves, but it was Iwerks who did the majority of the creation of the characters. Disney however is commonly credited with the creation and called a genius, even though he did almost nothing. Iwerks also got very little reward for his work and ended up leaving to start his own art stupio over the issue. Who deserves the rewards of the labor, the creator, or the person the creator just happened to be working for at the time, who stole credit?
There is one hell of a lot more to producing an animated movie than just drawing the artwork. Walt Disney supervised the entire production process employing the hundreds of individuals that were involved from the marketing manager to the janitor that cleaned the toilets. Everyone that was involved deserved the credit for the finished product but none more than the person that made it possible in the first place.
