[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Originally Posted by Skybird

You get treated like that, and you even excuse it? No dignity in that, man. No self-respect and no honor. You just allow yourself getting exploited and abused.

1. In America you can have self-respect and still have a crappy job.
2. No company I know hires employees based on that persons honor, dignity, or self-respect let alone care two cents about it.
3. I never said that I would excuse getting treated in such a way. But if its the only job I had would I want to risk pissing off the boss and getting fired?

Originally Posted by Skybird

If soembody abuses the weak position of others to exploit them to the maximum possible, if he tailors hius business to have taxpayer paying social wellfare to his employees, becaseu he does not pay them himself, but gives them 14+ hours per day, bad work, and by the end of the day sendcs therm home with 1 Eurpo per hour, then this abuse compares to slavery. A slave you give bred and water so that he can work for you. Here, you give him not even enough money so that he can buy the bread and water he needs over a day and the shelter he needs for the night. Actually, slaves in ancient Rome and Greece often were parts of the household, integrated members of family structures, and not rarely got released when their master was kind and their service was well.

For the first bit of this I do agree that it is abuse, that it is wrong, but I disagree that it should be called slavery. As for the second part as a definition of slavery.
"Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation."
The difference between what you are calling slavery and the true definition of slavery is:
1. The persons you are talking about aren't captured and held against their will.
2. Slaves don't get paid for their work.

Originally Posted by Skybird

I talked about dignity. That some of you guys think they need to start a forensic examination between the juristic definition of slavery and exploitive work while I obviously was in generally pointing out a general problem spreading int the West, just illustrates my point that Takeda so far indicates to not having understood. Is the meaning of this word, dignity, so very different in the anglosaxon language and economic conception?

As I stated before companys don't care about dignity. Dignity doens't exist in the economic volcabulary.

Originally Posted by Skybird

If you guys think it is okay if you bet payed extremely low wages for dirty and heavy work that you nevertheless must accept because there is no other available to you, then this is your problem.

I would think that there are some in America who would say "Well thats what imigrants are for." And I've seen with my own eyes imigrants from Centeral and South America who most likely are paid less then the average American worker doing the same job, but they work harder and in some cases do a better job then that of their higher paid counterparts.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Fair wages for fair work. That's what it is about. You owe it to your own self-respect to not accept being treated like a piece of sh!t.

Once again I do agree with fair wages for fair work. You say a thing like that to Mr. Trump, chances are he would give you a strange look and then laugh in your face.

And I will also take a passage or two from the book The Age of Napoleon, page 99 about econmic ideas that are from the 1800's but are very well and alive today.

" Owen was a new kind of man, such as the eighteenth century had not known. A saddler's son, he began to work in a cotton mill at the age of ten. In those times a working day of fourteen hours was standard. Young Owen not only worked but also managed to read practically everything that was written in the past hundred years; he not only read but also managed to rise from the ranks, and at the age of twenty-three he owned one of the most profitable cotton mills in Manchester. The facts suggest that Robert Owen was a remarkable lad. Among prosperous cotton manufacturers he was particularly remarkable in that he did not reguard the wretched lot of his workers as the necessary reward for their sinful and brutish ways. At his mills at New Lanark, Owen build a model industrial community, with decent housing for the workers, schools, sanitation, and non-profit making stores. In the factory working conditions were, measured against the prevailing standards, almost humane. To the consternation of of his fellow manufacturers, far from being ruined by such extravagances, Owen made bigger profits then ever."

And from the end of page 99 " While Owen tried to improve the workers' lot (the passing of the Factory Act of 1819 was largely to him), Jeremy Bentham proved mathematically that the workingman's happiness was best promoted by the industrialist's self-interest; Thomas Malthus argued that any attempt to feed the starving masses only incresed the masses and their misery; and David Ricardo demonstrated that it was no use to increase the workers' wages. Like Jacobin radicalism, these doctrines rested on eighteenth century assumptions, but the conlusions derived from them were more pleasing to the wealthy and well-born."

Originally Posted by Skybird

We have branches in germay with extremely low wages, of less than 5 Euros per hour. the 1-Euro job is a German speciality, unemployed people getting welfare can work such jobs if they do not get more money than 1 Euro per hour, else they lose welfare. The problem is that no longer only social welfare organisaiton who depend on voluntary work offer such opportunities to work, but that main business has jumped onto the waggon long time ago. They found companies that from all beginning on calculate with extremely low wages and later argue if they would be expected to pay fair wages, they would not survive and the jobs" would be lost. Exploitation as a business model, the social costs are payed by the tax payer. The government also argued that 1 Euro jobs were opportunities for people to get a foot ion the door and getting regular contracts later. But statistics prove with dramatical clearity that this is wrong. Almost everybody who falls through the net and ends as low-wage worker, never gets a chance to reenter the regular job market again. The number of low wage workers thus is dramatically expoloding in Germany. Today, every fifth already is like that. Hundreds of thousands of regular jobs were killed over the past ten years (the initiator has been a claimed socialist, ironically, Gerhard Schröder) and replaced with such low wages jobs. Of course you cannot make a living when beeing payed wages like that. The state has to pay welfare and come upo for the difference. So, private enterprise effectively sacks in the profits, but externalizes wages and fees for its employees to the public tax player.

It seems quite obivious that the German government and/or economists should have a look at such low paying jobs and figure out a way to improve conditions in favor of the workers and the company that employs them.

Originally Posted by Skybird

It a very big social dynamite bar that gets planted there. People are unable to pay insurances. Investing into their future. Their age, pensions are planned to drop to almost only 40% by 2030. In one generation you will see millions and millions of extremely old people in germany who live in bitter poverty, while the small handful of working mid-agers and young ones must pay and pay and pay like crazy, because there will be so few people in working age, and so many old.

It is a premium recipe for complete social desintegration of a society.

So then shouldn't that society look for a way to make it better and equal for all instead of making better for the few?

Originally Posted by Skybird

There is no dignity if people get treated like dogs, and their weakness gets exploited as best as possible. No dignity there. None at all. It's bad enough if you are in a situation where you are defenseless against the fist beating you. But if you even take that fist and kiss it, then you are lost, and your life as a human being has been a waste.

Please see earlyer replys about diginty and companys.