[PEN-L:28063] Re:: In defense of egalitarianism

[Gar Lipow <lipowg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol

> Consider just  one actual example -- me and my migraine headaches. Three
> years ago I got hit with what was eventually diagnosed as "atypical"
> migraine -- atypical in that instead of centering around one eye they
> occurred on the top of my head, and they were several orders of
> magnitude worse than the "ordinary" migraine I had been plagued with for
> decades but was (mostly) controlled by my anti-depressants. They put me
> in emergency room about every five days (with my ordinary 'upper'
> bloodpressure number of 110 going up to well over 200). Finally they
> were brought under control by a medication called Zanaflex (originally
> developed for another purpose. It makes it possible for me to live.


You caught me being overly succinct - maybe a first for me. I am
speaking specifically of the nature of compensation for an
*individual's* labor. Of course you will have a social wage that will
provide health care, compensation for sick time, education, child care,
compensation for  disability  , fire, police, garbage collection, parks
- collective consumption in general as part of a social wage. In this
sense any socialism (and for that matter most reasonably advanced
capitalisms) will have a certain amount of communism in them.

But I still say that to the point that you people are compensated for
labor on individual basis - that they are paid money wages, or a share
in the surplus of the enterprize that it should be on as equal a basis
as possible  - with differences due to productive effort and sacrifice.

Ken Hanley

> COMMENTS: Why would anyone think that power should be divided approximately
> evenly? How would this be possible?
> And how does one measure power to divide it up? Judges have certain powers.
> Police officers have certain powers. School principals have certain powers?
> Members of boards of regional health authorities. Power does not seem like
> money where one could distribute it "equally" just as you could divide up a
> pie.  Note too that most power is not by virtue of being an individual with
> certain mental or physical powers but accrues to individuals because they
> occupy a position in a certain social unit, a school, a court, a crime
> control system. With respect to power one would not expect it to be divided
> equally nor is it something that individuals have simply qua individuals..
> What is desirable is accountability of those with power, and collective
> power to control holders of power etc.



Fascinating all the assumptions in this paragraph. You seem to be
asserting that this type of divsion of labor *is* handed down by god. Do
you  think it is inherent in a division of labor that some jobs (as
oppose to tasks) consist mostly of pleasant and empowering, and others
mostly of rote, or highly unpleasant ones? Do you really thing that
"judge" in will be position that amounts to limited petty monarch as it
does in our society?

<snipping comment on Carrol because I answered it above, and anyway we
don't seem to strongly disagree.>



> While I appreciate the force of your arguments as to the possible
> consequences of large salary differentials I have doubts about whether it
> makes much sense to stipulate a range of allowable salaries. If salaries are
> to be used as an incentive to fill jobs that are not likely to be filled
> unless they are well rewarded, what happens if situations occur where there
> are shortages of type x workers but they are already paid at the highest
> allowable salary? If you give non-salary perks, how is that any different
> than simply giving them the number of dollars the perks are worth?


That is why you divide the perks up as evenly as possible. In general a
job consists of a number of tasks. If jobs are structureed in such a way
that every jobs contains about as much pleasant and empowering work and
as much unpleasant and rote, as any other then people will be attracted
pretty much evenly to every job as every other, and you can have equal
base hourly wages. In fact that is more or less the test. You have
divided your labor in such a way that you think most job complexes are
balanced, that is just about every job is as attractive as every other.
 Then you look at actual qualified applicants compared to other jobs
requiring the same qualifications. If your job attacts too few
appliations then it is not attractive enough. You either rebalance so
that it has  a greater share of the fun  jobs, or (if that is not
possible) you raise the wage offered. If you get too many applicants
then you either rebalance the job complex by adding some rote or
unempower tasks. If that is not possible you lower the base pay until it
attracts qualified applicants in pretty much the same ratio as other
jobs with the same qualifications.





> Just to use your first criterion of fairness payment for productive effort.
>     Jean gets paid 5 dollars for hour for making ten widgets an hour..
>     John gets paid 6 dollars for hour for making ten widgets an hour



This happens only if John is working harder.


>     Both get paid for their productive effort but it hardly seems fair. At
> the very least one would have to say that it is unfair that people who are
> equally productive should be paid different salaries--although given that
> you make sacrifice and how hard people work also criteria of fairness it is
> not clear how anything works out. What is Jean works like mad to make the
> ten widgets an hour and John just drifts along making the ten with lots of
> time to spare?


Well, then Jean is working harder. And Jean would  be paid more not
John. Remember, we are talking produtive effort and sacrifice. So for
there to be a wage differential,someone has to be working harder, under
worse conditons or both.

> Or what if  the job causes John to lose sleep and wake up> imagining that he is being buried in widgets and worries about not keeping
> up with the widget line whereas Joan has no trouble or worries about her
> work and sleeps easy? The unpleasantness and sacrifice is different for
> each. So do they deserve differential pay?


If the job gives John mightmares, he is in the wrong job, or he has a
problem with work in general and needs pyschological help, or the job is
stuctured wrongly, and Jean just happens to have an immunity to this
particular flaw. No way this should happen unless something is  wrong
with the job, with John, or with the match between them.


>     Also, even if both got 5 dollars an hour while gross profit per hour was
> 500 dollars from sale of the ten widgets,
> we would hardly call that fair.


Well if this is the result of egalitarianism, then wages are set on a
national, or international level. So if the per capita GDP was such that
the average wage was $5.00/hour, do you really think such an extreme
disparity should be allowed that some people get $500 an hour?  If any
substanital number of people earned $500. hour than a lot of others
would have earn signifcantly less than $5 per hour. It seems amazing
that you can advocate that on the basis of fairness.


> So how do you arrange this? If incentives are such that the unpleasant jobs are easily filled why should one require others to do them as well. In fact those with the
> unpleasant jobs might not even appreciate this.


Because we don't want the consequences of a highly paid group of people doing shit jobs working for low paid managers. Paying premiums for shit jobs is a last resort - something we avoid alltogether if we can, and make an exception if some sort shit owrk simply cannot be shared.  But generally everyone should do their share of the shit work, and the fun stuff too (everybody able bodied of course. Impaired people, if they work, get paid full salary for work and schedules suited to their impairment, or for not working at all if the impairment is such as to require this. And any special needs due to disability come out collective consumption, not their personal income.)