Do you consider it unethical to pay less than it takes to pay less than it takes to live alone, but enough to hold down an appartment with a couple of roommates?
Is Wal-Mart offering a couple of roommates?
Is every treatable disease, no matter the cost of treatment, included in that, or are insurance companies allowed to draw a line inconsderation of how common or expensive a treatment is?
Let’s say it’s every disease a middle-class person could get treated. The point is to eliminate class distinctions in medical care, not to suddenly wave our arms and inaugurate Utopia.
Is that food required to be convenient, tasty, and nutritious, or can the wage assume the employee does their own shopping and cooking with less costly food?
The food is required to be nutritious enough to never damage the health of the employee. Cooking time can be assumed to be traded off with working time, which can be taken to imply a 40-hour workweek as is legally considered full-time in most developed countries. Convenience and taste are left to taste, though I’m assuming at least some access to decadent upper-class luxuries (/sarcasm) such as iodized salt.
What if one potential employee has a different idea of what it takes to live than others?
I dunno, what if we stop trying to evade the point that Wal-Mart’s wages are unlivable?
I mean, come on, we’re talking about a company that set up a charity collection for its own employees. That means even Wal-Mart acknowledges Wal-Mart pays poverty wages.
I think I was just trying to get at the fact that living wage definition can reasonably differ, and that being so, isn’t it up to the workers to evaluate for themselves, based on what they can tolerate or accomodate?
You’re going to have to go into more detail about that charity collection, because although I assume that Wal-Mart may very well pay below what one can comfortably live on alone long term, the fact that some or many of the employees inspire charitable giving doesn’t prove that—a living wage, and one that can provide enough to live on in all foreseeable bits of bad luck are two different things, at least according to your definition. And if you work at Wal-Mart, you probably are a little worse at things like long term planning or impulse control.
On a tangent, there’s another large employer I often hear about underpaying their employees—universities and grad students—but it doesn’t seem to raise the same ire. Maybe I’m not clear on the details and the difference is significant?
On a tangent, there’s another large employer I often hear about underpaying their employees—universities and grad students—but it doesn’t seem to raise the same ire.
Would you like me to tell you about the misery of being a grad-student? I can speak from first-hand experience!
But if I do, I’m yelled at for being more fortunate than the poor sods at Wal-Mart, you see.
I read that article; it seems to support my possibly awkwardly worded argument above that having a charity drive for employees who have had unforeseen events and are currently in hardship does not prove—or is merely weak evidence that—the store pays a wage at which the average competant person would be able to expect to live with above minimal standards of living.
For one reason, to be perhaps presumptious, workers at Wal-Mart probably have less long-term planning ability than workers at higher paid jobs—or at least draw from populations in which the skills are less common, etc—and therefore, even if paid enough to live and save, are less likely to have a “rainy day fund” and more likely to need a charity hand-out should they have a car problem, or health problem, etc. Note that it was charity provided by fellow employees, not the general public, so someone they pay clearly has more than the bare minimum.
All employers take attention: Never do anything useful for your employees, because it will create an impression that you are not paying them enough, which makes you an evil person!
(Not meant seriously. But it makes me sad that when one has decided to hate some person, any good deeds of that hated person can be very easily explained away as an evidence that the person feels guilty or needs to fix their evil image.)
Is Wal-Mart offering a couple of roommates?
Let’s say it’s every disease a middle-class person could get treated. The point is to eliminate class distinctions in medical care, not to suddenly wave our arms and inaugurate Utopia.
The food is required to be nutritious enough to never damage the health of the employee. Cooking time can be assumed to be traded off with working time, which can be taken to imply a 40-hour workweek as is legally considered full-time in most developed countries. Convenience and taste are left to taste, though I’m assuming at least some access to decadent upper-class luxuries (/sarcasm) such as iodized salt.
I dunno, what if we stop trying to evade the point that Wal-Mart’s wages are unlivable?
I mean, come on, we’re talking about a company that set up a charity collection for its own employees. That means even Wal-Mart acknowledges Wal-Mart pays poverty wages.
I think I was just trying to get at the fact that living wage definition can reasonably differ, and that being so, isn’t it up to the workers to evaluate for themselves, based on what they can tolerate or accomodate?
You’re going to have to go into more detail about that charity collection, because although I assume that Wal-Mart may very well pay below what one can comfortably live on alone long term, the fact that some or many of the employees inspire charitable giving doesn’t prove that—a living wage, and one that can provide enough to live on in all foreseeable bits of bad luck are two different things, at least according to your definition. And if you work at Wal-Mart, you probably are a little worse at things like long term planning or impulse control.
On a tangent, there’s another large employer I often hear about underpaying their employees—universities and grad students—but it doesn’t seem to raise the same ire. Maybe I’m not clear on the details and the difference is significant?
Would you like me to tell you about the misery of being a grad-student? I can speak from first-hand experience!
But if I do, I’m yelled at for being more fortunate than the poor sods at Wal-Mart, you see.
As to Wal-Mart and their charity incident...
I read that article; it seems to support my possibly awkwardly worded argument above that having a charity drive for employees who have had unforeseen events and are currently in hardship does not prove—or is merely weak evidence that—the store pays a wage at which the average competant person would be able to expect to live with above minimal standards of living.
For one reason, to be perhaps presumptious, workers at Wal-Mart probably have less long-term planning ability than workers at higher paid jobs—or at least draw from populations in which the skills are less common, etc—and therefore, even if paid enough to live and save, are less likely to have a “rainy day fund” and more likely to need a charity hand-out should they have a car problem, or health problem, etc. Note that it was charity provided by fellow employees, not the general public, so someone they pay clearly has more than the bare minimum.
All employers take attention: Never do anything useful for your employees, because it will create an impression that you are not paying them enough, which makes you an evil person!
(Not meant seriously. But it makes me sad that when one has decided to hate some person, any good deeds of that hated person can be very easily explained away as an evidence that the person feels guilty or needs to fix their evil image.)
Colleges and football players are starting to raise the same kind of ire in some circles. These things are to some degree a question of fashion.