Thursday, February 05, 2004
Before I start today, I just want to say on a completely stand alone note:
IT'S A BREAST, PEOPLE!!!!!! A PRIMATE MAMMARY GLAND!!!! A MAMMALIAN INFANT MILK DISPENSER!!!!!!! GET OVER IT!!!!!GAD!!
Ok. So some of you may remember me talking about the Dittohead Gunshop owner on 302 who has the sign in front of his shop. He usually has Rush's quote of the day on it and try as hard as I can to avoid it, every once in a while I read it. *shiver*
The one he has had up for the last week or so particularly bothered me because I have been thinking about this for a while. His brilliant synopsis was something like "Blood sucking leech Demarats/Unions whine that businesses are making profits...why do you work?" Now I don't even know where to start on this.
My dad was in the UAW from before I was born. He worked at Catapillar Tractor Company for 30 years and retired from there with his pension. But every 3 years we went through the process of contract negotiations and strikes. Not because the workers kept wanting more, but because the company kept wanting to take away what they already had! So I may be coming from a biased perspective here but I have tried to look at it objectively. I have a business. I want to make money with it someday.
So.
If Joe entrepreneur goes out one day and decides to open his very own widget company in his garage, builds the widgets, goes door to door selling the widgets, packs up the widgets and ships them to customers, answers his own phone, takes orders, bills the customers, cleans the garage and maintains the machinery and office equipment...then yes, he
deserves to keep 100% of the profits from his widget business. He earned it. He busted his ass for that money and it is rightfully his. Hurray free enterprise!!!
BUT... If Joe decides that he just isn't physically capable of doing all that work or if he thinks he might like to have some time with his family or time to spend the money he is making, he is going to need to get some help. His choices at this point are to mechanize his operation, buy/build robots to make the widgets, clean the garage, answer the phones etc. Or hire some people to do it. This is where most businesses start griping. I can't remember HOW many times I have heard that STAFFING is the largest source of overhead. If anything gets cut, it is 99% of the time, staff. People cost too much, you have to pay them too much, you have to pay social security and unemployment and insurance....
Well, that's a CHOICE you have to make as a business person!!! If you don't want to pay all of that, get a robot!!!! The don't cost half as much!! But they don't do what a human can do either. Sort of like you get what you pay for.
Or you send the jobs overseas. You pay people or children 10% of what you would pay an American, no social security, no unemployment, no insurance, and you have the added benefit of not paying property taxes in America, you don't have to keep your buildings or working conditions up to OSHA standards...well you get the idea.
I think there needs to be a radical reexamination of how businesses look at employees. Rather than looking at them as overhead, they should look at them as investors in their business! Because really, that's what they are. These people are investing their time, energy, dedication and talent in this business. If Joe entrepreneur had to do all of that work himself, he would never build his widget business into a multi-million dollar multi-national widget conglomerate. Just as he needs people to invest money in his business to make it grow, he also needs people to invest themselves in his business. And all those things that come with having an employee; salary, benefits, social security and whatnot, should be thought of as paying out dividends to the investors, just as you do to your stockholders. Because just as Joe did when he was in his garage doing it all himself, these people are working their asses off and they have
earned these things!!!! Without these people, Joe would still be back in the garage!!
And, think about what it does to everyone involved when you pay a 10 year old in China 50 cents piece work for a job that a grown man with children was doing here for $10.50 and hour. Yes, the business increases it's profits a hundred fold, but it is saying that the business is the only one that deserves to make ANY profit from it at all. The 10 year old certainly isn't making a profit from 50 cents piece work and the grown man with children certainly can't even afford to live on 50 cents piece work. And he can't afford to live on unemployment for long either. So our choices here in America are becoming take this job at this ridiculously low wage or we'll pack up the whole factory and move it to Taiwan where they will take 50 cents piece work and thank us for it. Pretty soon we will be in the same state the kids in China are in because we have to earn money and that is the only money that is being offered.
Why do businesses need
so much profit? And why can't they see that they aren't the ones
earning that profit? By taking a person's time, talent, energy and dedication and not giving him the benefits and rewards of that investment, you are stealing from him. Just as if you had reached into his pocket and took his wallet. You don't take $1000 from an investor, hand him a buck and say 'sorry, we're only giving you this much of your dividend because we want to keep more for ourselves'! For one thing, it's illegal, but for another, no one would even think about it because it is an obvious, established business transaction. No one would say that the investor didn't earn his dividend. He put up the cash, took the risk and should reap the rewards. The same goes for the guy in the widget factory. He puts in his 8 hours, his talent at making widgets, his dedication to making the best widget he can... this is just as valuable an investment to the company as the $1000. Perhaps more so because that $1000 will be spent on machinery or supplies that will last maybe 10 years but that man will be there, giving his best to the company every day for 30 years if he has a reason to stay. If he is given a return on his investment.
Just a thought.
posted by Kimber
at 9:23 AM ::
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