Cash/pay let's YOU decide what benefits you need.
Yes there may be freebies and certain benefits available such as flying for free if there is a seat available, free food, or free passes to places you work etc, these are designed to keep you at work or involved as well.
However healthcare and insurance should NOT be managed by companies that you don't work at typically longer than 1-2 years on average. Should our companies also pay our auto, home and other insurance? so we can change them all when we change jobs? Benefits should only be freebies that aren't private.
You also have to be careful with benefits if they go too far i.e. in the future work will have apartments on campus like in China and a throwback to feudal/sharecropper kingdoms, then your company completely owns you. Better to just get pay, freebies and handle insurance/health and your own private business on your own.
The problem with real compensation is it is not evenly dispersed, cash/pay is. The real value also needs to be spent. You might have benefits that only 25% of a workforce take advantage of, well the 'real compensation' includes everyone using that, it is a bit like a gift card that you only spent a portion of. It isn't real money and sometimes costs the company little compared to the value that is stated.
They are economically easier, because the firms I know can bring economies of scale to bear on them, which I can't do on my own.
But that's opinion.
You are arguing the merits of Real Comp - as if there is some world in which Real comp will NOT exist.
The issue I am pointing out, is that this is a theoretical world, like round cows.
In the real world, this will always be the case, so aside from a rhetorical device, or thought experiment to examine certain models, its not a practical item.
There will always be a situation, Such that, firms in different industries, will possess capital and service advantages, which make it easier for them to pay X$ in costs to the firm, and provide (1+C)*X$ of benefit to their employees.
You can't escape that.
Therefore, you must deal with it.
- gross wages and salaries earned by employees and payable in cash.
- cash allowances, overtime pay, bonuses, commissions, tips, and gratuities if paid by the employer to the employee.
- remuneration in kind paid by the employer to the employee valued at purchaser's prices, including meals and drinks, personal accommodation, uniforms worn outside of the workplace, vehicles or other durables provided for the personal use of employees, free personal travel, free personal fuel, recreational facilities, transport and parking subsidies, and creches for the children of employees.
- real or imputed social contributions and income taxes to government payable by the employee in respect of employment. the value of the social contributions in respect of labor hired, which are paid by employers – these may be actual social contributions payable by employers to social security schemes or to private funded social insurance schemes for employees; or imputed social contributions by employers providing unfunded social benefits.
- income of students from paid work, including the value they contribute through work for an educational institution.
- income received by shareholders who are also employees of the corporation, and who receive paid remuneration (e.g. stock options) other than dividends.
- income by outworkers who are paid by an enterprise for work done.
- the value of the interest foregone by employers when they provide loans to employees at reduced, or even zero rates of interest for purposes of buying houses, furniture or other goods or services.
My guess is you don't take advantage of all those items but your 'real compensation' includes it. Companies are paying you 30% in benefits that they retain. Yes there will always be freebies, but those should just be that freebies, nothing to do with personal health insurance and healthcare. Just pay people more.
REAL compensation will always exist.
Simple systems, like first order approximations, can always do away with complex balancing constants, or recursive functions/costs, and feedback loops.
Similarly, in any real world situation, some fraction of firms will always find a way to plump up their employee compensation, without having to put a real cost to it.
So for example -
Major tech firms have on campus gyms, doctors, free food and so on. (We'll be ignoring the fact thaty they have campus-es in the first place)
Startups do it by offerring risk/reward tradeoffs.
In India I know Firms that provide complimentary transportation - and manage the insurance for that transportation.
Pilots and their families fly free, hospitals give admin staff better health care access, so on and so forth.
These are descriptive, non exhaustive examples.
The point being made is that Real Compensation in the real world will always have to be a calculated/inferred field/value.