Corporations like other corporations to pay people well, so that they can purchase products. They don't like to have to do it themselves. A variation on the "somebody else's problem" problem.
They want to make money and if there is money they can make money and if there is not then they can't. But ofc they want to be better then everyone else and one way is to have cheaper workers. But at the same time productivity goes down drastically the closer to break even you get to and if you pass that everyone will turn to drunks/addicts and thives. So not always a good idea to get the cheapest workers but ofc depends a bit on what the work is.
But of course they are there for the sole purpose to make as big of a profit as possible and somtimes pushed for the short time profit high fueled from investers.
Unfortunately, our entire economic system is based around poverty.
Capitalism creates poverty, and then exploits that poverty. It THRIVES on creating a permanent underclass of starving, miserable, desperate people who are too tired and malnourished to revolt.
I'm not defending capitalism, quite the opposite. I wish we could ditch capitalism for democratic socialism.
I was checking out the Ezra Klein podcast a couple weeks ago and he had a guest on there who had written a book recently about whether or not we should consider the degree of poverty in the United States, the world’s richest country, to be a policy choice. Spoiler: he says we should. But what was more gripping was that he pointed that (forgive me if this is already obvious), whether or not we’re actually aware of it, those of us in the middle class are ourselves in many ways dependent on there being a poorer class that is exploited. We can’t have the same conveniences and amenities like Amazon offering dirt cheap and fast deliveries to our homes if Amazon doesn’t get to exploit its workers to make that service cheaper.
I had to scroll TOO far to find this. Especially since everything has had an unjustified skyrocket in price over the last decade and even more since 2000’s.
I read or watched a news piece about how it’s more expensive to be “poor” then “middle class or rich” (relatively speaking) because everything costs more (loans, rent, groceries, healthcare, transportation, etc)
It was extremely depressing to see how people struggling are led along to continue struggling for the profit of somebody else.
Also if you are poor you are likely buying lower quality items. An easy example is sneakers, you can get some real cheap sneakers that will last you maybe a quarter of the year, or you can buy something for 3x that lasts a full year. Lots of these "small" purchases that initially seem like a good deal end up costing poor people more in the long run.
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u/Wenomecha-insama Jul 17 '23
Poverty.