The baby boomers thought that if everyone just got a college degree, no one would have to perform manual labour. According to the modern cult of higher education, manual labour is bad and should be avoided. This is of course a lie. There has to be people who work the production lines, take the trash away and unclog the sewage pipes. The reason that this error in thinking hasn’t caused Western society to collapse yet is because we outsourced all the manual labour to immigrants and sweatshops in Asia.
In reality, these jobs are essential. During COVID-19, the idea of the essential worker came to the forefront. Said essential workers increasingly realised how valuable their work was, and began to express discontent about their low wages.
How much money would you personally be willing to part with in order to have these jobs done though? How much would you pay someone to prepare a hamburger for you? Probably not much. Just about anyone can make a hamburger. What you’re paying for is the convenience of not having to. When I want a hamburger, I will seek out the cheapest one I can find. When I’m balancing my budget, I don’t think about the paycheques of hamburger cooks. My concern is to spend as little as possible while getting back as much as possible. In other words, I’m being a consumer.
As consumers, we’re encouraged to look for the best bargains. As workers, we’re encouraged to save on our taxes. Somehow, when business people do the same, they’re criticised for this. We expect a level of wealth sharing from business people that we aren’t prepared to engage in on our own part. When Elon Musk dared Twitter about selling shares in order to pay taxes, this was one of the things he was getting at. Would it fix anything if wealthy people gave away all their money?
Pointing and yelling at the elite is too easy. So is the idea of taxing wealth. What tends to happen when you tax the rich is that you just force them to sell their possessions. If you own a business that is tremendously successful, this makes you very wealthy on paper, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have vast amounts of cash in your bank account. It’s possible to run such a business while taking out a comparably modest paycheque. In our system, where earnings and profit are taxed before wealth, the income tax on this paycheque is what the owner of the company personally contributes to the treasury. The situation on the ground for many entrepreneurs is that they don’t carry a lot of cash.
If you wanted to start a business, would you do so with the primary goal of making as much money as possible? Most businesses aren’t started for that reason. If your passion is money and money alone, that’s what Wall Street is for, but if you’re going to go down that path, you really do need to be passionate about money. This isn’t the same thing as being greedy, mind you. I’m talking about taking a keen interest in developing knowledge and skill within the field of economics. Most entrepreneurs are more interested in the product or service they are creating. Money is mainly a means to an end for them, in the same way that money is mainly a means to an end for most other people.
If we raised wages, brought industry jobs back to the West, and told our children that manual labour is important, this could lead to a more sustainable economy, but it comes with a catch: Everything will get more expensive. All that extra wage money can’t come out of nowhere. Something’s got to give. Are you willing to pay the price?