Mar
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Blog Post #11 Andrew Chen
March 26, 2015 | Leave a Comment
The Forbes article is very critical of Nick Hanauer’s unpublished TED talk. Hanauer’s points are dismissed entirely, by Tim Worstall, who says that the underlying goal is to get people to save, therefore investing their capital, which then creates jobs. Whereas Hanauer says that if taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down, Worstall argues that marginal tax rates have an effect on labour supply, rather than taxes on the rich. I agree with the fact that Hanauer should not be comparing his consumption to the consumption of the average person in the United States. Sure he can’t make up for the consumption that other people aren’t doing, but comparing that to eating out a few times a month like the average person and buying clothes a few times a year is a little much. The number of occurrences may be the same, but the quality of items being bought are different. Hanuaer is able to afford a higher end of quality, thus spending more money.
In “Working Anything but 9 to 5”, the story of a working single mother of one is told and makes me think about how shifty hours and unset working schedules not only affects the workers who work at an establishment, but also the lives of the people around them. Scheduling technology does indeed help companies cut down on labor costs during slow and non-busy times, but at what expense? The low-income parents who need to plan their working hours around their child(ren) are affected severely. Ms. Navarro only resolved her situation slightly by bringing it up to higher management, and depending on the goodwill and aid of her family and friends, but not everyone is able to do the same.
Such a system is allowing big corporations to mistreat their workers, such as with McDonald’s forcing employees to work off the clock, shaving hours off time cards, and not paying overtime. The software allows franchisees to monitor the ratio of labor costs to revenues, and workers are told to clock in and out depending on such information. Workers are also forced to pay for their own uniforms, which lowers their real wages to below the legal minimum. Such malpractice not only makes the lives of their workers harder, but also discourages many from entering the workforce for these companies. I feel that the legal suit will be a small reprimand towards large companies, but laws need to enforce the prevention of taking advantage of workers.
Another loss for the workers occurred in December of 2014, where it was ruled that employees at Amazon.com don’t need to paid for their time spent on anti-theft checks. With this Supreme Court decision, a victory goes to the larger companies. Amazon can now take up the employees’ time, at no cost of their own, but rather for their own benefit, to prevent inventory shrinkage. The court are against such payments because the company hires the employees to be productive, rather than “undergo security screenings.”
With all of these cases of policies against the worker and the plight of the low income earners, income inequality is hard to improve. Many families are struggling to manage their lives and scrape by, all while making low income. I think several policies need to be enacted to help the workers, rather than the corporations, who are too focused on generating higher amounts of profit, while minimizing costs as much as possible.
