As discussed in class today, Marx once compare wage to slavery and his justifications for this claim come about because of his belief that labor is the only good or service in capitalism that is underpaid. My counter claim to Marx's ideas is that perhaps slavery would be favored to wage, more specifically minimum wage. Take for instance the Massachusetts minimum wage of $7.50, multiply that by 40 hours, the length of a normal work week, to get $300 per week, excluding taxes. From this figure multiply by 52 weeks per year to receive $15,600. Finally, multiply this figure by two thirds to obtain an approximation of personal income after government income tax to leave a person with $10,400. This income needs to be able to cover clothing, food, housing, utilities and more, and for the current value of the dollar on today's market that will be a formidable challenge. Also, Massachusetts now requires each citizen to have health insurance, so if one's employer does not provide it the individual must seek this service and pay for its entirety. All of these figures only influence one person and severely limit the possibility of getting married and having a family. So, one might as well pick the life of a slave because food, clothing and housing is taken care of, while the only sacrifice would be personal freedom. And although losing personal freedom may be a big deal in most Americans eyes, one would have to work more than one job to be able to support one self and it eventually amounts to the appearance of slavery just to keep living.
From the above discussion, I hope to raise concern about the need for a concerted effort to bring attention to minimum wage and this farce attempt at equality government and business impose. Companies within the United States generate billions of dollars of income in a single industry let alone the whole market and yet they lack the morals to compensate workers justly. This gap in business ethics must be closed in order to eliminate the claim that wage is just a better form of slavery. Perhaps capitalism must take a fall in order to accomplish this, but in any case, serious reform and action by the business ethics community must be sparked in order to give laborers what they deserve.
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Another example - America has not had a national daycare plan since WWII when women were encouraged to join the workforce. Although we all have the potential to do better for ourselves, many of us need a lift... There are few loopholes and many gaps in the floorboards.
We need a definite lift from the government to help some people out of their hole and I believe that many people can recover with a little push in the right direction. One way to aid someone is to give them an education and that leads to another problem we have in our society, education costs so much. If even this would change many people would be given countless opportunities and poverty could be hindered.
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