Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: JeffBC
I've always wondered why the party of "family values" wasn't arguing hotly to raise minimum wage.
Why pay more when you can get twice as much labor for the same price instead?
In other news, the labor union movement supported universal education because it would eliminate the competition from child labor, allowing better leverage that would, in turn, allow an increase in general wages. In the long term, there were benefits to this, as we all know and take for granted today, and the industrial oligarchy was quite pleased in the end. It's short sighted to keep the peak of the bell curve at $10K pr annum pr household.
I often hear the argument that low wages are required to be competitive, but it doesn't seem to work that way.
Up here, effective minimum wage for one person is higher than typical household income in the US, and yet most of our industry thrives.
For instance, in tiny Norway, the nation smaller than anything you'd call a city, on a small island off the coast with some twenty thousand inhabitants, the island where I live, we do subsea work, and we have fully half the international subsea market. The view from my front door is mostly verdant hills. Three minutes out, I see sheep. Five minutes out, I see two malls, no larger than a Walmart store, and a bus station. Tiny place.
But at seven minutes out, it gets interesting: a major harbor, precision manufacturing, engineers, software developers, major consultancies. Fifteen minutes out, a drydock that can accomodate an oil platform, major manufacturing, research and so forth. Thirty minutes out, a military airport, rented for civilian use, and a "city" by our standards, one that's doing equally well in other areas.
As for growth: We're moving a lake to make room for the parking we need; upgrading the bridges and roads for about a billion dollars; setting up a high speed, high capacity commute rail; and installing geothermal energy systems because it's cost effective and environmentally friendly. We like to think sustainable here, as do the numerous local millionaires that have chosen to invest heavily in the communities that brought them this far. Loans have largely been unneccessary.
Regarding quality, sustainability and repeat business, it's looking good.
In fact, a lot of the contracts we get were originally awarded to American companies that failed to deliver. The customer comes back here, and we deliver what they want, on time, on spec and on budget. Heck, we have so much skilled labor on hand that if they're willing to cover the extra cost, we can just ramp up and pick up the lost time from being distracted by the slightly cheaper competition. In practice, cheap costs more in the long run, and it's a lot easier to keep your own budgets in order when your suppliers are reliable, as well as easier to build a reputation for quality when you have high quality suppliers and partners.
If you want cheap, you don't go to America, you go to India or China.
If you want quality... well... we make a living off that, and a rather decent living.
And, of course, if skilled labor is unavailable, or we need more skills without needing more labor, we simply educate the workforce. It's our people, after all, so we want to retain them, build on what we have, together. Because in the long run, that's the only way that pays off in terms of real value and real sustainability.
It may not be ideal to have both parties at work, and indeed women still tend to prefer part time labor in Norway.
Most households have between 1 and 2 jobs in total (a full job is 7.5 hours per day plus 30 minute lunch break, 5 days a week, with a total of about 47 work weeks per year and one month paid vacation). This amounts to a typical household income of about ten times what the typical household income in the USA is, but it could be a bit higher if women picked more demanding work. Notice "picked". With similar total cost of living and similar purchasing power, having ten times as much income amounts to having more options.
Whether or not women in the workforce are a problem, it's not the problem.
Only decades of intense neglect, and extra helpings of every problem that's been mentioned in this thread (e.g. lowering the bar, instead of raising the quality of education), has resulted in the much criticized situation that our education is now almost as poor as American education. We now hold everyone back to the lowest common denominator in schools. This will hopefully change after the upcoming landslide election, as the parties coming out of that one alive are the ones that rely on proven research and experiences in comparable countries (e.g. Finland) in their approach to education, instead of dogma (our current government's take on education is reminiscent of that guy that thought women couldn't get pregnant from rape: facts don't come into it).
Really, we're imbeciles up here, so anyone should be able to do better. Just import the few things that do work, and take the educational system from Finland, then you'll completely lose interest in the question of whether or not women in the workforce is a good idea.
Incidentally, if you care about children or education, read Vygotski, and make your politicians and teachers do the same.
End of rant... 
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
|
RE: MS gov says "education declined with women ent... - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread