Wage Slave, partial self ownership

There is much confusion over the idea of Wage Slavery. Most of the Arguments condemning Wage Slavery are directed to far left wing liberals. These appeals to emotion hold no water with rational people. Wage Slavery is a real problem, one that affects the free market.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Wage
• Slavery
• Chattel
• Free
• Market

[etzel33]

working for discretionary income, and not for basic survival, couldn't be considered wage slavery, even though the product of that labor was transferred to the owner of the enterprise that employed you. but the video is correct IMO in identifying that a choice between starvation and wage slavery is no choice at all. not joining the far left though, sorry.

[SpamSpamNEggs]

@etzel33 If "working for discretionary income" can't be considered wage slavery, let me ask you this. If a chattle slave is placed in a nice house and given money to spend how ever they choose (but not enough to buy freedom), are they no longer a chattel slave? At what point of income/comfort does being owned by another person stop being chattel slavery?

[etzel33]

@SpamSpamNEggs i was thinking along the lines of a basic, guaranteed income or "public dividend" that could remove the substinance factor from the wage equation. Hence "discretionary" income. If it costs everyone X to live and we only make X in wages, we have zero discretionary income. This is the unfortunate reality of the free market towards labor, to drive wages as far down as possible to X or even below it. Perhaps if unions were "presumed" in all businesses of 2 or more workers!

[SpamSpamNEggs]

@etzel33 You are talking about solutions. I was identifying the factors that lead to the problems we agree exist in current "free markets". The underlying problems is how we THINK about labor. If we don't change that, then no solution will work.

[mjbarrowful]

The wage is the result of your actions. You did not invest the money in the capital or the land or the natural resources. You did not arrange them in a way that is productive enough to generate enough revenue to continue operations. The wage is simply a price of the labor. Wages will rise as the workers skills become more specialized and there is more capital to produce more goods. And it is true that income tax is slavery, I agree with that part for sure

[ElDukerino1]

(cont'd).

I should add these to the employer responsibilities:

4) devise some mechanism to determine the employee's contribution toward total end products (share in value produced),

5) describe what are the required duties of the employee (what they do & how quickly they must do it).

[ElDukerino1]

..(cont'd)..

2) aprise employee at some frequency what the net income of the entire co-op organisation is, and

3) re-negotiate the amount of employees compensation with some frequency.

If all this is done, and the employee is offered & chooses to earn $8/hr all along the way, would you consider that wage slavery?

[ElDukerino1]

@SpamSpamNEggs

I was going through my old comments box & found this one...

I can see what you're saying a little more clearly after reading your other comments here, but you're really confusing the matter by claiming this is fraud by employers. To put it another way, what you are maybe suggesting here is that employers have a responsibility to do the following:

1) inform a worker that they are participating in making the product (duh)

2) aprise employee at w/ some frequency what (cont'd)...

[janc71]

@SpamSpamNEggs Yes, you'll have to explain why it is not voluntary, because I don't see any force being used to get you to take the job and agree to be paid by the hour. It is essential to my position that people have the freedom not to accept. Psychological appeal, as in 'people don't always act rational', is not valid, because that argument can also be made for other kinds of payment.

Looking forward to your video, and yeah, if you'd care to send me the outline, I'll be happy to read it.