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kleinbl00  ·  2063 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Random quotes of the week

From the two economies

    We have long had this notion of the “working class.” These are the people who don’t own businesses and are not “professionals” like doctors, lawyers, or accountants.

    I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the future of work. It is the single most difficult chapter to write in my upcoming book, partly because I don’t like the conclusions I’m coming to. One thing I am realizing is there is a distinction between what we have seen as the “working” class and what I am coming to see as the “service” class.

    A working-class person is somebody who has a trade, and because of that skill, can generally command a decent income.

    The service class—bar and restaurant workers, retail salespeople, general manual laborers, and so on—is almost plug-and-play. It is not that the greedy restaurant owner doesn’t want to pay his staff more; it’s that competition generally won’t let him do so and still make a profit. So he holds his labor costs down—and he can do so because in today’s market, there are typically more people available for these jobs than there are jobs. And because of the Obamacare mandate, if you are a business with more than 50 employees, you simply cannot afford to have full-time employees, so you resort more and more to part-time positions, which don’t let workers earn adequate wages.

-John Maudin, Thoughts From The Frontline Aug 4

The capitalist class is effectively arguing for socialism.