Focusing just on wages distorts the picture. Average and median total compensation has climbed over time. They haven't climbed recently but that's because we're in a recession, profits have gone down as well.
Even if that hadn't been the case and profits where growing without compensation growing that's hardly an outrage, the market for labor is a separate market from the markets of goods and services produced by the companies that hire the labor. They influence each other a lot, but they aren't going to automatically go the same way. And importantly most of the policies pushed by those who have opinions like yours or apparently "Meteor Blades"'s will tend to harm employee compensation as well as profits (either by reducing after tax compensation for those who are working, or by increasing unemployment causing the compensation for more people to be $0)
No business will give up a single penny of its profits to keep its workers healthy.
That simply isn't true, they need healthy employees to continue as a business. Even in times of high unemployment, labor isn't an undifferentiated lump. People with certain skills can't easily be replaced by people with an entirely different set of skills, and even people with the general skills for the industry, need to be trained on the specifics for the company.
The businesses compete in a competitive market for their employees. Employees in the specific labor market for the company in question are able to demand a certain level of compensation. That may or may not include health insurance, the employees might prefer more cash instead, or the state may add too many requirements to the insurance making it to expensive esp. as compensation for the least skilled employees where minimum wage and the expensive insurance cost more than the worth of the employee to the company. Those insurance requirements, and the minimum wage are both creations of the state, so that's where the blame should be placed.
If companies started operating as charities rather than profit seeking entities, in the very short run they could cover unproductive employees, even in states with very expensive requirements, but shortly they would probably go out of business.
There used to be an unspoken deal between labor and capital that profits from productivity increases would be split
Nonsense, there was never such a deal, not even an implicit one.
and since then, capital has taken all the money
More nonsense, compensation has increased. |
