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.
It has been pointed out to you repeatedly that wage growth was extremely slow under the Bush expansion. Its gotten much worse under this recession. I don't think you really get how angry people are......and I am not talking about the crazy tea baggers. In the last ten years, people have finally woken up to the BS going on in this country. The exploitation by the wealthy class and their efforts through lobbyists to get gov't to cooperate with their twin goals of greater wealth and power.
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)
Why have profits and salaries of upper mgmt. grown significantly over the past ten years while wages for workers have not?
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.
Then why are they not providing their employees with health care insurance while fighting health care reform?
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.
I thought you said companies want their employees to be healthy. If that were true, they would insist on providing health care insurance.
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.
This is a straw man argument. No one is asking companies to cover employees who are not good workers. |
