Smasharoo wrote:
So you now agree with me that just because Wal-Mart's total value increases, it does not mean that the value of the employees labor has increased
Well, realizing you aren't at all capable of understanding this: It's a systemically valid approach to define the value of a corporation as the value of the labor of it's workers.
Sure. But the question is whether the value of each individual employees labor increased, or if said increase in company value is because the business has expanded and hired more workers, each one of which has the same dollar effect on the company's value as they had before? In the former case, the employees wages should increase proportionately, but in the latter, it should not.
Since Bijou was arguing that every employee should get a raise commensurate to the increase in total company value, his argument assumed that only the former case existed and ignored the possibility of the latter. I pointed out that the latter case disproves his assumption by providing a really simple example where his argument fails (company doubles the number of employees during the same time that its total value doubles). In that example, there is no reason for each individual employees wages to increase since each individual employees labor contribution to the value of the company has not increased.
As to the case of Wal-Mart, I think it's pretty safe to say that the total dollar valuation increase over time is primarily (if not entirely) the result of the type of expansion I spoke of and not that the same number of employees are just working so much better today than they were 20 years ago or something else silly. The shelf stockers, and door greeters, and register workers are no more competent today than they were in the past. So why should their wages increase relative to those past workers (other than inflation effects, I suppose)? They should not.
Is this really a thing that requires this much argument?
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This is, really, the fundamental way human beings perceive 'value'. "Value" of random objects that haven't been improved through labor is an arbitrary construct created primarily to allow easy power stratification and exploitation.
Yeah, great. Totally missing the point, but great.
You have 100 widgets. Each one is worth $100. The total value of your widget collection is $10,000, right? If we double the number of widgets, the total value of the collection also doubles to $20,000. Note however, that the value of each individual widget doesn't increase. Same deal with labor. Twice as many workers can (theoretically) generate twice as much profit for a company. But that doesn't mean that you pay each individual worker twice as much per hour of labor. Cause that would be stupid and not work mathematically at all.
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Please don't respond, I wasn't joking about you being literally incapable of understanding.
And yet, I can actually do math. Funny that.
Edited, Jun 24th 2015 7:09pm by gbaji