(November 27, 2011 at 9:08 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Have we factored in the amount of ingenuity and creativity it takes to live at poverty level? Maybe the job the minimum wage slaves of the world do is a little more complicated and critical than we're giving them credit for. Even the "grunt" risks his life. How many hours of programming or pipefitting is that worth, and just how simple do you think it is to assault a pillbox or fortified position?
One thing -- the engineer can improve and design said pillbox to cost successively more "grunt" lives in a scalable fashion.
You make a grunt who can scale up in the act of taking out pill boxes, then we can compare apples to apples.
As it stands, minimum wage labor is devalued particularly because it doesn't scale well, doesn't allow for radical improvements or redesigns, and because it is common.
(November 27, 2011 at 9:08 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Deciding that one's job is more difficult or complex than another's may be a useful way to generate pride in what one does, that doesn't mean that the picture we've painted for ourselves is an accurate one. Since we're on the subject of grunts, you know how much a medic E-5 makes in comparison to the salary of an infantry E-5? Exactly the same. Seems to work for the military.
When it comes to investment in time and money for training and deploying medics, I would postulate they're paid the same because their cost is roughly the same.
Slave to the Patriarchy no more
