The meritocracy is a lie: The wild myths that allow CEOs, hedge funders and the 1 percent to outearn

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Keep workers afraid and hungry and they will agree to any salary

thats why we need capitalism. Then workers have to be paid the maximum amount possible or their companies will go bankrupt!

 

[SAYIT]

A few years ago I was invited to speak to a group of employees at a power plant who were considering whether to form a union. One young man who intended to vote against it told me he was worth no more than the fourteen dollars an hour he was then paid. “I say for these people making their millions, that’s fantastic. I could have done the same thing if I went to school and had the brains for it. I do not, so I’m a laborer.”



The man apparently had no knowledge of the 1950s, when more than 30 percent of the nation’s private-sector workforce was unionized. That gave the nation’s blue-collar laborers enough bargaining power to summon the equivalent (on average, and in today’s dollars) of thirty dollars an hour—even though many hadn’t finished high school. It wasn’t their brains that accomplished this. It was their bargaining clout. But the power of trade unions to negotiate good wages for hourly workers has declined markedly since then. That’s why the young man I met was “worth” no more than fourteen dollars an hour.


The meritocracy is a lie: The wild myths that allow CEOs, hedge funders and the 1 percent to outearn us all - Salon.com

It is no longer the 1950s and whine all you like, those days are gone. We have moved from smoke-stack manufacturing to service and high tech development. While less than 2% were college educated in 1950, over 25% of our workforce has at least 1 degree today.

This has contributed mightily to the "income inequality" so many leftists now complain about. It's an education gap.

Those paid for what they do get $14/hr.

Those paid for what they know get much more.

 

[SAYIT]

If the devil was real, he'd be a conservative.

If you are not liberal at age 25 you have no heart.

If you are still liberal at age 35 you have no brain.