I suspect there would be less #depression if people had a #livingwage, no more than a 40 hour #working week, could #afford a #roof over their head, #healthy #food, #childcare, #care (respite, suitable #care homes or financial support you can live on for #caring #responsibilities, & the #NHS was brough back up to it's previous accessability including #dental.
https://www.islandecho.co.uk/ventnor-park-cordoned-off-after-shock-body-discovery/
@Delphi but you’re not considering the costs if lower productivity contributed to worse standards of living throughout society.
There’s more to work than just money. Workers actually make stuff and provide services to others.
@volkris Can you explain a bit more. I'm not following.
Why would productivity be lower if people had a living wage?
I agree there is more o work than money but it's hard to do a good job if you don't have the basics of a reasonable life. So, secure, healhy people would have the potential to be happier more effective workers.
Have I missed you point?
@Delphi well the limitation on working hours more directly impacts productivity than living wage. (And, for that matter, limitations on how I can apply my labor, the hours that I’m allowed to work, certainly makes me unhappy and impacts my agency)
But even when it comes to living wage, such proposals often make it just not mathematically viable to offer goods and services to customers, with resources being taken away from where they are needed in order to write those paychecks.
You can’t productively make food for people if you can no longer afford the ingredients as the budget is skewed by living wage implementation.
@volkris I know this is how things have been developed, so that many workers are treated like fodder resulting in poor health, shorter life-spans but it has to be changed.
Arguing against living wages is saying that the business is more important than workers and yet without workers there would be no business.
@Delphi again, my focus isn’t on the business but on the fellow humans that are counting on the goods and services being offered.
A business can only succeed to the extent that it’s offering goods and services to humans who need them, but so often that gets overlooked.
If you go to the store and there isn’t bread on the shelf because workers were prevented from working the hours they need to make the bread or costs are increased to the point where the bread can no longer be produced, you lose out. Real people lose out.
Never forget the downstream negative impacts when you start messing with production that people are relying on.
@Delphi You’re still missing the point: with out production pay doesn’t matter because there’s nothing to buy.
If there’s no bread on the shelf because it wasn’t produced then it doesn’t matter how much you were paid, you still can’t buy the bread because it doesn’t exist.
Without production none of the rest matters.
Appears you miss the point. When large amounts of cash are taken out of a business as profits and payments to shareholders, the product, bread in your example, becomes very expensive
Less people can afford it. By lowering wages, not paying overtime, etc, more cash is taken by the company
This is when profits, greed & personal extravagance is the motivation rather than feeding human beings.
Example: compare cost/person for #healthcare in US & UK. UK better outcomes, less expense
@paka You’re still missing it: You’re assuming there is bread in the first place.
You’re talking about large amounts of cash taken out of a business making bread, but that assumes there is a business making bread.
What if there is no business making bread?
THAT’S crucial to consider. Because if no business is making bread, then there is no bread.
Raised in America?
@paka yep, and I’ve faced such shortages.
@volkris How much more affordable would the bread be if the management and owners earned the same as the bakers?
We aren't going to agree. As I see a better way for society to not depend on poverty & you are happy for some people to live in poverty.
I expect you also believe that it is wrong for health to be free at point of service paid for by society as a whole. It's the American way & I'd rather have a fairer society.
BTW - I bake my own bread.