,
9 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
What I mean by that is that your compensation is not just YOUR issue. It is one shared by the entire community. Because your compensation affects your entire community. 1
The fact that some actors in the community (such as employers like yours) don’t play along is a societal dysfunction. They treat the success of their employees as an externality. This tears at the fabric of society. 2
Companies should not be allowed to treat their employees lives as externalities. Sure in the short term they make more money, but in the long term they drive society back to something more primitive, and then we all suffer. 3
The fact that companies today find it “not in their interest to pay employees properly” is because we have structured the game so that is true. There is no natural law that says that or supports that. 4
All we have to do is change the rules of the game so that it IS in their interest to pay employees properly. That is the function of government, and why we all need to build a strong, representative government. 5
You can see the same forces at work in real estate. The federal mortgage deduction is one of the largest subsidies in the country. Because of this (and other laws) the single family dwelling is typically the largest financial asset that most Americans own. 6
That may seem like a good thing, but it means that home owners treat their communities like a bank and not like a neighborhood. They reject bike lanes and community halls, not to mention immigrants and people of color. They want to protect their “property values.” 7
IOW, our laws make it so that “property values” always win over “community values.” This is why NIMBYism is so prevalent, and more so in affluent neighborhoods. 8
My point here is that saying, “Well, that’s the way it is,” doesn’t really reflect reality. It would be more accurate to say, “Well, that’s the way we have made it.” And, that means that we can change it to something that suits us all a lot better. 9
