Everything at a Price

Everything at a Price

by Roberto Esponja on Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 1:20am ·

In life, and especially in business, everything comes at a price. Comsumer products and values are bought and sold, at an ever decreasing expense to those in the market for such. Even the most idealistic among us, if we are honest with ourselves and each other, would have to admit that one of those values is loyalty, which isn't neccessarily bad.

Often times though, we are short sited in considering the true cost of these things, regarding the far larger impact of what is being bought and sold. So just what is the real cost of these things which are so casually bought and sold? What defines "value" to us, when we consider price?

Most consumers recognize that a paying a lesser price does not always make for a greater value. However, if we consider that labor is invloved in every factor pertaining to product cost, (materials, labor, and overhead) we should also realize that the cheapest price is not the best price, because often in seeking the cheapest price, we are undermining our own long term best interests.

A partial solution (and probably very over simplified) to a lot of our socialogical financial issues, and ever increasing divide between the classes, might be the need for businesses to relearn the value in taking care of the people that take care of the business. The cost of purchasing employee loyalty should be considered a part of the cost of doing business as it once was when it seemed that our businesses and societies were, in large part, fairing much better.

I don't think most people would probably mind paying a fair price if they were making a fair wage, but being forced to buy the cheapest products in order to compensate for not being paid a liveable wage, only means that a good portion of the cost involved in providing these goods and services is at the expense of the workforce involved in providing them, the most negotiable factor in the equation.

Let's be honest, the decrease in financial compensations and profit margins is born in larger percentage by those making the lowest wages, and a decreasingly lower percentage as the wages increase within the power structure of any organization.

Cyclically, the cheaper the products, the lower the wages for the people that make them possible, in order to compensate for the decreasing profit margin. (Which again,benefits those at the top of the food chain, far more than those at the bottom.) If a person's wage comes to be seen as too high they get cut to make way for the next cheaper candidate comes along. (Repeat) The

Consequently, the employee comes to be seen as increasingly expendable and decreasing valuable, as companies continually strive to drive prices down while keeping profit margins up, in order to make them affordable the people making lower wages, who as a result of their lower wages seek cheaper products, and so it goes...on and on and on. The "loyal" long-term employee simply becomes the overpaid employee.

This mentality also devalues the roles and lives of those struggling to make ends meet, and the families they support. Many people find a great sense of identity associated with their work, and would include it as a part of their personal accomplishment. However, one's role being devalued at the work place then becomes a personal feeling of decreasing self-worth, as they become less and less able to provide even basic needs for their dependants. (Let's say health care for instance) Some reports in fact, state that financial stress is the number one factor in divorce. I believe it.

We are in the middle of this cycle it seems and I don't know quite how we get out of it. Quite honestly, given big business' apparent lack of effort toward ending this cycle, I don't think big business and those who profit most from it, are at all concerned with this issue, or even wants it to be resolved as they stand to benefit most in perpetuating the situation.

One thing certainly seems clear though, the power of dividing and conquering is being exploited, by businesses, to its fullest measure among their employees, and they discourage unions and unity, among workers to continue this cycle of profitability.

The polarity of the business philosophy seems to have shifted, and business no longer feels that the prosperity of the employee is mutually relational to the prosperity of the business. Rather the prosperity of the business now comes, to an increasing degree, at the expense of the employee especially when the market fails to meet the expectation of projected earnings .

As a culture, we have become accustomed to calling our rather lavish and indulgent lifestyles "modest", but these "modest" lifestyles, were initially in large part, made available to us by this shift in business/labor philosophy.

We paid extraordinarily low prices without regard to the real cost, and who was absorbing that cost, because the culturally devestating impact of this thinking was felt only by people far from our shores, out of sight and out of mind.

There is the expression that no standard was ever compromised that did not then become the norm and it seems, that now the bill has come due at home for our having embraced this philosophy. We are slowly coming to realize that we have bargained oursleves out of liveable wages, for the jobs we have not already exported to cheaper labor markets.

This problem is magnified with the attitude that the more money dispursed to those lower on the food chain, comes at the expense of those higher on the food chain, but this is simply untrue.

Now, if it were simply a matter of keeping a struggling business alive it might be a fair enough argument, but many, MANY, businesses this past year reported record earnings and those earnings don't seem to be finding their way into that "trickle down" that apparently still remains a theory. Job availability remains low and those jobs that are available don't pay enough to support the people who do them.

One of the many advantages of having money, is that you can afford to wait out those who have it in smaller degree, until eventually they become hungry enough to smile and say thank you in the face of their exploitation in order to simply maintain survival. It is a game of who can wait the longest before their resources run out. Like pitting a bike and a semi in a head on collision, the lesser weight will always come out on the short end.

Eventually everyone has to get on with living, and let's face it, living is neither free or easy these days, so when the weekend's over we return to work.No matter how meeger that wage may be, it's better than nothing, we tall ourselves.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I sure feel the effects of the problems.

d(-_-)b