Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainger99
(Post 2208192)
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The article, published in a blog advocating “unfettered free trade and Austrian economics,” makes the case for laissez faire capitalism, paying employees no more than they force employers to pay, providing no benefits employees don’t force them to provide, paying is little tax as is quasi-legal. Andrew Carnegie and many like him would have approved of the argument. Of course they would, because what they didn’t give to others made them richer. As for others, who cares? But Carnegie in his old age had a Scrooge-like conversion and spent most of his fortune endowing public libraries and giving money to many good causes to this day through the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. I’m glad he did. But what if he had amassed less but paid his employees better instead of paying them as little as possible? Yes, he was taking the risk and deserved to profit, but his employees were doing the work and also deserved more. How many would not have ended up destitute after accidents if he had been more generous? How much more pleasure and comfort could he have provided to those who actually helped him?
In capitalism for the past century, unions have forced many parsimonious employers to share a bit more of the profit, and so long as their demands weren’t exorbitant, everyone benefited. Not least, because employees could afford to buy more, those who owned the company’s stocks and bonds received more through profits, as well. Giving hard-working people more money to spend turned out to be a huge incentive to economic growth. In some industries and companies, employers haven’t seen a growth of unions because they have provided employees with generous salaries and wonderful benefit packages from the outset, without being forced to do so, having learned the lesson taught by those who gave unwillingly: strikes are very expensive for all involved. (For example, many companies selling computer-related items and cars).
The argument that the idle poor should not be given so much that they would rather be on welfare than work is not without merit. Poverty is a terrible thing, but what we call poverty here is wealth in many countries. Our families in poverty in some cases may have color televisions, cell phones, nice cars, Medicaid, free education, negative taxes, air conditioning and heat, refrigerators, wifi, and still find money for drugs. One might ask, though, if paying for the support is better or worse for business than having them rise up and burn our cities. To some extent, the wide welfare benefits we provide are what we pay to prevent a revolution. Our experience a couple years ago during Covid showed us that giving lots of extra money to poor people eased their lives a lot and raised a lot of them up from poverty. They responded by buying a lot of things, improving the economy and possibly keeping us from a depression. Of course, they weren’t paid with money taken from the rich, but from we the people through gigantic debt we will never pay off, though we will pay the interest.
The biblical approach in the Torah was that if people were out of money and couldn’t find work, they could sell themselves and their families to people who had money and would pay their debts. In exchange, these bond servants or indentured servants served their owners for a certain number of years—the agreements varied, but they were supplied with food and clothing and shelter in exchange for labor. Even Scrooge might approve.
