Re:The story of Henry Ford's $5 a day wages: not what you th...
by SilasX on Sunday March 15, 2020 @01:54PM
(#22585145)
No, that's the point[1]: it's dubious to think that the worker's wages should bear any relationship to the finished product.[2] That's all the author is establishing there.
Yes, paying workers just enough so they can afford a paperclip is obviously a bad idea.
Yes, paying workers just enough so they can afford a 747 is obviously a bad idea.
Yes, it's still a bad idea when an efficient wage would be just enough for them to afford the same product (here, a Model T) you're producing. Even if that is a good idea here, the standard -- pay workers enough to buy the output -- is a bad one, because the output could be anything from a cheap consumer good to a megaproject.
[2] even under general mechanisms by which "price tends to cost" and intelligent uses of the labor theory of value, a worker might be contributing a valuable input (engineering design), or a not-so-valuable input (cleaning services for the offices).
Yes, paying workers just enough so they can afford a paperclip is obviously a bad idea.
Yes, paying workers just enough so they can afford a 747 is obviously a bad idea.
Yes, it's still a bad idea when an efficient wage would be just enough for them to afford the same product (here, a Model T) you're producing. Even if that is a good idea here, the standard -- pay workers enough to buy the output -- is a bad one, because the output could be anything from a cheap consumer good to a megaproject.
[1] which, full disclosure, I've made myself: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2012/01/mr-ford-meet-boein...
[2] even under general mechanisms by which "price tends to cost" and intelligent uses of the labor theory of value, a worker might be contributing a valuable input (engineering design), or a not-so-valuable input (cleaning services for the offices).