Re: @LucreLout - Can you guess what I'm going to say Tim...?
unless there's a situation of almost full employment which forces employers to offer better wages, they can say "This is what we're paying, take it or leave it. If you don't take it, someone else will".
Neatly missing the point that if the skills and experience of the production worker were the entirety of the process, they'd have long ago started their own business, under cutting the former boss by a very large margin, while more than doubling their take home pay. Only, they can't. They can't, because as integral to the yacht building process as their skills undoubtedly are, there are a great many other skills involed - such as the designer, the safety certification, the salesman, the marketer, all the way through to the tea boy. Then you have the costs, like rent, tooling, materials, energy, and yes, workers. Gathering all of that into one place is certainly a skill too, which is why the business owner gets rewarded. The employees are self evidently taking less risk with their capital (none?) and so get a lower risk:reward balance.
Perhaps I should point out that I've been running my own business for over 20 years and got an A-Level in Economics many years ago
Well that certainly qualifies you to..... Well, I'm not sure what. And its worth bearing in mind that IT contracting isn't running a business in any real sense, its operating a tax shelter. Running an actual business that employes people who aren't family members requires a very different skillset.
But the fundamental point that *you* are discounting is that it *takes* money to make money. The first rule of the game is that you need a stake to get into the game.
Well, yes, sort of. I have a friend who runs his own boat building company, and has done for a very long time. Since about the time he didn't get what he thought of as a fair pay rise. He'd like to build yachts too, but can't finance that level of operation, so he started with narrow boats. Instead of bemoaning the yacht making business owner taking most of the profits (which is the point of owning a business), he became the fat cat of his local boat industry. Fast forward a further ten years and he'll be the boss of his own yacht firm, which rather undermines your world view.
unless you make sure that the game a) has rules and b) people are made to play *by* the rules, you will always end up with a situation of increasing inequality.
Equality of outcome is irrelevant, and as it happens, utterly inevitable. Equality of opportunity is what really matters, and you'll never get that between the only child of a millionaire and a single mother of 5 on a council estate, no matter how lavishly you fund her benefits or how hard you try to tax the wealthy.
Take literally any other aspect of life... do we beat pretty people in the face to equalise their looks with those of us with a visage that appears to have been kicked by an epilleptic donkey? Do we chemically retard the intelligent down to the level of the average socialist? How about making the uber hot sleep with the fat and fugly, to you know, equalise their opportunity for sexual encounters? Nope, its so ridiculous that we don't even try. Why then are those of you on the left so obsessed with other peoples money? Just relax, because it's not yours to worry about, sequester, or gift away.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
