I found this comment over on Echidne of the Snakes:
No one should be allowed to hire someone at lower than a living wage; to allow it is to institute partial slavery and it drives down everybody's wages. If they can afford the obscene salaries for the bosses they can afford to pay people a living wage. If they can't, let the bosses do the work and earn their keep. Pay the damned board members a minimum wage for their phony, work-free jobs.
The point is well taken that paying less than a living wage is partial slavery. And, of course, it is the poor subsidizing the rich. Horrible.
Hi Ellie, we have an interesting moral problem regarding this matter in the u.k. at the moment, one, I know you've had for many years.
ReplyDeleteTo avoid paying working people the right wages for the crappier jobs, employers, backed by our government, import labour from Eastern Europe who accept the poor wages and basically live in squalor. As your item infers, this means the wages of all working people stay down because if the base rate of pay went up, everybody else's pay would go up accordingly.
So, as a poorly paid priest, but one with just enough money to live on, do I oppose immigration to try and force a better deal for the working people of my own country, who don't have enough to live on, or do I encourage immigration because the immigrant's come from an economic situation even worse than our poorly paid?
I really don't know the answer (other than killing the rich and redistributing their money).
Hi, MadPriest. It is a dilemma and I don't know the answer. However, I think that, as Christians, we have to face the fact that capitalism is a profoundly unchristian system and we're not going to be able to come up with a morally acceptable solution within it. But I don't know if we have the will as a species to preserve the earth long enough to realize that capitalism is morally bankrupt and then come up with a fair and decent way to distribute what we all need to live.
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