Date: 2025-07-03 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00003359
An economy is founded on economic activity. The health of an economy depends on the nature of the economic activity, and central to this are 'jobs'.
In money profit accounting the profits are best when a job produces a lot but costs a little ... in other words low wages are better than high wages. Many products are being sold at low prices in wealthy countries because they have been imported at low prices from countries like China where productivity is very high and wages are very low.
The fact that low wages result in poverty and a class of working poor does not matter in money profit accounting for an organization. Simple 'profit maximising' corporate behavior is widespread in modern corporate organizations to the detriment of society as a whole. Many major companies have embraced profit maximisation to the exclusion of most everything else, and in the process have done massive social and environmental damage without any accountability.
In TrueValueMetrics (TVM), while a wage is a cost for an organization it is an important revenue for an individual, the family and the community. Up to a point, more wage is better than less wage in terms of social impact.
More and more individual wage is not better and better for the society. Two people earning $20,000 a year is better than one person earning $40,000 a year and one person earning nothing, for example!
Unemployment ... no wages in a community is an economic and social disaster. Priority must be for jobs that produce value and give reasonable wages to workers.
A major rethinking of the value of different forms of work is needed, together with a lot more clarity about the responsibility of employers towards their workers not only during their employment, but after that employment ends.
For more on this contact Peter Burgess ... peterbnyc@gmail.com
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See more at http://www.truevaluemetrics.org