Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[Coito ergo sum]

A lot of this thought process depends on where one is sitting and whose ox is being gored.

What is equitable changes when a person is in the payer position, and changes if one is in the payee position. The former generally thinks a lower payment is equitable, the latter thinks a higher payment is equitable. And, some people think equity is based on need, and others don't.

Employers tend to think that need is irrelevant when an employee wants more money because he needs it. An employer thinks need is relevant when he thinks the employee doesn't need as much. It's human nature.

When I think about hiring an employee, I do not really care much what someone thinks the job should pay. I think of what I can afford and how much it is worth to me to have someone do the job. If what somebody thinks is the "going rate" isn't what I'm willing to pay, then I'm sorry, I can't pay it.

There's a fine line between necessary protections, and overtaxing the market. The more it costs me to hire someone, the more money I have to make in order to afford that person. And, employers generally look to an employee as to whether or not that employee is value added, or a cost. If an employee brings to the table a way for the employer to make money, then there is a concrete reason to hire the guy.

These fluffy and mushy words like "equitable" do have meaning, but they aren't concrete enough to make decisions based on them. It means exactly nothing for someone to say that people need to make a living wage or a fair wage. That doesn't tell anyone anything.

[Seth]

I don't know what it's like where you are, Coito, but I suspect it's not that different to Australia, wherein personally negotiating pay rates is not possible for most employment positions. The types of jobs where it is possible to do so are fewer than those where it isn't possible. Okay, you can say that if people want the privilege of negoting pay rates then they can just go and seek those jobs ... That's fine and dandy ... but the point is there only so many of those jobs ... and it still leaves a large number of people vieing for all those positions where such negotiations are not possible, and having to settle for what is on offer.

Indeed. So what? If the work available is common labor requiring only basic common skills, why should an employer pay more for such labor than what the average qualified applicant will accept for the work? When you're in competition for a job, you have to either ask for less or prove you're worth more in order to be offered more. So what? That's how business works. You seem to think that the employer owes you something. He doesn't.

If someone is hired to do a job, in Australia the pay is commensurate with the work and time, regardless who is hired. Same work, same pay .. qualifications have nothing to do with that aspect of it. Qualifications only come into it where/when a company/organisiation prefers qualified people for a job, in which case they wouldn't hire an unqualified person for it in the first place ... or where/when the government imposes a minimum standard of qualification, in which case the company/organisation are compelled to hire qualified people, by law.

Well, qualifications have everything to do with it. If I hire two people to assemble widgets, they are both doing the "same work," right? But if one person can assemble 40 widgets per hour and the other can only assemble 10 widgets per hour, why should I pay the latter the same as I pay the former? Obviously the latter is less qualified than the former, and deserves a lower pay rate as a result, since the whole point of hiring either of them is so that I can get widgets assembled with maximum efficiency at the lowest possible labor cost. The former worker is worth more to me as an employer and deserves to be paid more even though he does the "same work" as the latter.

You're describing productivity here ... quite a different consideration to whether an employee is qualified.

Indeed. Both employees are "qualifed" to make widgets, are they deserving of receiving the same wage because they can both do the same job, even when one of them does a much better job than the other?

Here, at least, we have workers unions to negotiate rates and working conditions on behalf of a bloc of employees.

I have no particular quibble with private-sector unions, so long as they don't misuse government power to give them an advantage in the negotiations (as they do under the National Labor Relations Board regulations here in the US). Banding together to negotiate with an employer is perfectly appropriate, so long as the employer is free to say "no thanks" and boot all union members out and hire non-union workers. That way, it's a free and equal negotiation in which the employer seeks to obtain skilled employees who will all work for a negotiated wage/work structure without his having to negotiate with each employee, and the employees will have a representative negotiator to look after their interests, but with the understanding that if they ask for too much, they may ALL be fired and replaced.

I can only disagree that it's better if companies can dictate employment terms, along with the notion that people are there to serve a company and that it's not an engagement of mutual cooperation.

Why? They are there to serve the company. They are there to do work the company needs done in exchange for a negotiated wage/benefit package. The mutuality is that the employer needs qualified workers to produce widgets at a cost-per-widget that allows the employer to make a profit and the worker needs a job so he can feed his family and pay his rent. But if the worker demands more in wages and compensation than the employer can afford to pay while still making a profit marketing widgets, then the employer must say no to the wage demand and he must find another employee who is willing to do the required work for less money. The employer/employee relationship is not a family relationship, it's a business relationship. The worker has a skill set to sell and the employer needs that skill set. It's no different than the relationship between the employer and his customers.

The employer needs that employee and should pay an equitable rate for his services.

Isn't that for the employee to decide? If employee A is willing to do the work for amount X, and employee B is only willing to do the work for amount 2X, why should the employer pay more than X to have the work done? You see, an "equitable rate" is whatever rate is freely negotiated between employer and employee and what the employee eventually decides is equitable for him to get for the work. Just because YOU don't think it's equitable doesn't mean it's not.

As for customers, they are employers and employees too ... and employees are customers, as are employers. It's a big old case of mutual necessity keeping things going

Yes, that's how free markets work, both for products and for labor. So what? The employer who pays too little and asks too much will have difficulty in finding qualified, loyal employees to do the work, he will suffer turnover, theft, inefficiency and other bad things will happen, including not being able to service his customers because people won't work for him.

The useful employee offers skill, dedication, loyalty and effort to his boss, which reduces costs by eliminating replacement and training needs, so it's in the best interests of the employer to treat his employees well, when the market for jobs isn't glutted with equally qualified people competing for the same jobs.

When it is, the employer will naturally pick the very best, the cream of the crop, because he can pick and choose when there are more workers than jobs. That's how the market works.

So yes, it's a "mutual" system overall, but when it comes to any specific worker, it's whether or not the employee is a good fit with the employer.

... everything else aside, for that alone, we are all equal.

Equal in what way?

Business and commerce are not some sort of social welfare system that obligates the business owner to create a lifetime social and familial relationship with a worker that binds the employer to looking after the employee's welfare.

Extremist arguments, eh? Okay ... Are you in favour of slave labour?

Of course not, I am totally against the collective dependent class enslaving the productive class in order to have them provide all the goodies that the dependent class cannot and will not produce using their own labor but instead acquire by enslaving those who can, and will produce wealth.

[charlou]

I don't see it in terms of "class" ... we're all in it together and interdependent, like it or not, and regardless how we structure it ... hence my comment about being equal.

[Warren Dew]

I don't know what it's like where you are, Coito, but I suspect it's not that different to Australia, wherein personally negotiating pay rates is not possible for most employment positions. The types of jobs where it is possible to do so are fewer than those where it isn't possible.

The situation in the U.S. is different from what you describe. I think that in most job types here, the pay rate is negotiable. Government jobs and perhaps some jobs with large, calcified corporations would be the exception, but frankly that's not where most jobs are.

[charlou]

Aye ... for example the concept of having to work for tips is generally pretty foreign here ...

[Seth]

I don't see it in terms of "class" ... we're all in it together and interdependent, like it or not, and regardless how we structure it ... hence my comment about being equal.

But we're not "equal" in every way, or even in most ways, nor is "equality" in every way something to be wished for. I prefer to be superior in every way I can be because being superior brings greater rewards.

We may be "interdependent," but my dependency on the teenage minimum-wage burger flipper only extends to whether she gets my order correct the first time.

And most socialists absolutely depend on class distinction to support their propaganda and rhetoric, there being two basic classes; the "rich" and the "not rich."

Well, here's the thing about capitalism, if you're in the "not rich" class, nothing keeps you there but your own inadequacies and fears. You can improvise, adapt, overcome and join the "rich" class any time you want.

Socialism doesn't offer that hope, it offers exactly the opposite, it offers the promise that if you do work hard to succeed, what you manage to acquire will be taken away from you because it's not "fair" for you to be better off than anyone else.

[Seth]

Aye ... for example the concept of having to work for tips is generally pretty foreign here ...

You don't have to work for tips, you GET to work for tips. Most servers make much more than minimum wage and can make good, solid middle-class incomes as servers getting tips...if they work hard and please their customers. If they don't, they don't get good tips. That's how that thing called "incentive" works.

[Exi5tentialist]

Seth, there is a whole world of political issues outside of 'workers should be grateful for work and shut up' politics. I thought you'd been kidnapped, but then I find you living it up in here!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You folks should read the "Cult of the Boss" in the November Playboy. Just sayin'.

[MattShizzle]

Not to mention there are some cheapskates who don't tip no matter what (or will give, for example, $20 on a $19.59 bill and say "keep the change" even for great service.)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not to mention there are some cheapskates who don't tip no matter what (or will give, for example, $20 on a $19.59 bill and say "keep the change" even for great service.)

Which divides the previous tip by two, for a ~50% pay cut for the server.

[MattShizzle]

Well, here's the thing about capitalism, if you're in the "not rich" class, nothing keeps you there but your own inadequacies and fears. You can improvise, adapt, overcome and join the "rich" class any time you want.

Seriously, you might as well tell someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk.

[redunderthebed]

Well, here's the thing about capitalism, if you're in the "not rich" class, nothing keeps you there but your own inadequacies and fears. You can improvise, adapt, overcome and join the "rich" class any time you want.

Seriously, you might as well tell someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk.

This is correct.

[charlou]

You folks should read the "Cult of the Boss" in the November Playboy. Just sayin'.

Might have to get a copy of that ..

Edit ... actually not sure I can here ... Can you paraphrase what it's about, please, zilla.

[Seth]

Seth, there is a whole world of political issues outside of 'workers should be grateful for work and shut up' politics. I thought you'd been kidnapped, but then I find you living it up in here!

I don't care if workers want to complain, but it's the boss's money and the boss's business and he doesn't have to have anybody working for him he doesn't want, and he only has to pay them what he's willing to pay them. If they don't like the terms of the employment contract, they can go work somewhere else.