Talk to me.
In our last comment thread, someone suggested that,
if a family wage was instituted, then bonuses or raises would still be applied appropriately- even if it meant giving raises when the man had a new baby.
To this, commenter Aaron responded:
How exactly does this in particular benefit the employer? Compensation is usually given to high-performers and/or talented butt-kissers. A corporation does not really care whether its employer has another child; it only cares about ROI. If it is a good investment to give a high-performer a raise, then the corporation who sees this will do so. If a low or average performing employee gets a raise based on having a child, how does that encourage people to perform well?
What Aaron has done here, in spectacularly succinct fashion, is underscore with several thick, black lines what is wrong with the current system. It is summed up in this sentence: “A corporation does not really care whether its employer has another child; it only cares about ROI.”
In the introduction to the IHS reprint of Hilaire Belloc’s An Essay On The Restoration Of Property, the editors state:
Readers will therefore not find, in Belloc’s works, traces of that skepticism which speaks of politics as merely the “art of the possible,” and of economics as a science of hypotheses based solely on observable phenomena and codified into a collection of equations, charts and graphs. As an integral Catholic, Belloc followed in the footsteps of St. Thomas the realist, who spoke of Politics as the moral science “which considers the proper ordering of men,” and Political Economy as that science “concerned with the using of money…for the good estate of the home.”
Thus is Belloc’s treatment of economic questions, in Restoration of Property, Economics for Helen, and the Servile State, concerned with reality in both its profoundest sense and its most practical. Profound because Belloc has always before him a knowledge of the Purpose of the sciences, a knowledge that all of the tools, techniques, and means means employed by them are given clear and well-defined directions and orientations by their various Purposes. And practical because when Belloc considers economic matters he is concerned not with the pie (-in-the-sky) charts of modern economic theoreticians, but rather with how to solve the problem of securing for men the material necessities of life in a manner most befitting both their dignity as free men and their sublimity as souls destined for Heaven. There is nothing novel in so doing; Belloc simply follows St. Thomas in subordinating the acquisition of wealth to the true needs of man: “That a man may lead a good life, two things are required. The chief requisite is virtuous action….The other requisite, which is secondary and quasi-instrumental in character, is a sufficiency of material goods, the use of which is necessary for virtuous action” (On Kingship, I, xv).
Such an approach has for a long time seemed quaint and “unrealistic” to a society concerned with satisfying “the bottom line” and getting “more bang for the buck.” Has seemed quaint - until recently. Today such an approach is touted almost as a “revelation” by many moderns who, all of a sudden, are realizing - even if unconsciously - that St. Thomas had the order of economic priorities exactly right. Protesting the domination of academic activity by finance, and the lawlessness of corporate America, a recent editorial in the Nation declares, “The larger purpose of the economic order, including Wall Street, is to support the material conditions for human existence.”
How charmingly similar to the approach taken by the classical and Catholic political economists, men forming a constant and coherent tradition extending over 2200 years, from Aristotle of the fourth century B.C. to Charles Devas of the early 20th century A.D.!
The editorial continues: “During the past two decades, a profound inversion has occurred in the governing values of US economic life and, in turn, captured politics and elite discourse - the triumph of finance over the real economy. In the natural order of capitalism, the financial system is supposed to serve the economy of production - goods and services, jobs and incomes - but the narrow values of Wall Street have become the master.”
I have been trying to establish the fact that the obvious contention between the well-being of the worker and the company ROI too often finds the worker losing that battle. It is the health of the company that matters, not the health of the worker or his family. It is the depth of the corporate bank account that is of chief concern, not the ability of the worker to establish his family in a modest but comfortable standard of living. In corporations, the money flows uphill. This is simply the nature of capitalism, which is at essence a nicely-dressed but still greed-based economic model.
Aaron asks “If a low or average performing employee gets a raise based on having a child, how does that encourage people to perform well?”
The answer to that is simple. If a man is a worthless employee, he should still be fired. But if a man is treated by his company as if he is valued; if the employer seeks to ease the man’s financial worry and reward him for his contribution to society through the procreation of children (who will, it should be noted, become the future customers on which the long-term health of all commerce depends) he will have peace of mind and a sense of loyalty to the firm that will more than likely induce good will and a willingness to contribute.
Economic darwinism may produce some favorable benefits of competition, but it also creates bitterness, anxiety, backstabbing, manipulation, and the devious tactics of survival that help a man rise from poverty to wealth. People who aren’t making ends meet don’t give their best to their jobs. They come into work tired from lack of sleep, or hungover from trying to drown their sorrows. They resent those in the company who are prosperous but seem to do little while they are working hard just to scrape by. They may look for supplemental work, which takes more from their limited supply of time, energy, and mental clarity, making them less productive overall.
The model of the business should really be the family. When a new child is born into the world, his parents do not seek to make him prove himself and work his way up in the home; they invest in him with care and patience, and nurture the contributions he is able to make to the home as he grows old enough to bear responsibilities. A family can do this because its chief concern is love, not its bottom line. And if a business will never truly emulate this, it is possible to take true concern for the development and well-being of employees if the goal is modest profit, not infinite growth. Happy employees are productive employees, and as long as everyone in the company has what they need at home, why must a company continually grow in revenues? If every worker in a business is being provided for adequately, what is the great tragedy in annual sales which are flat?
But what man needs goes even deeper than a good company that takes an interest in his well-being. He needs, at some point, to become an owner himself.
Belloc says:
Man, to live, must transform his environment from a state in which it is less to a state in which it is more useful to himself. This process is called “The Production of Wealth.” Moreover, if a man is to live conformably to his nature, there must be available for his consumption a certain amount of wealth, in a certain variety, for a certain unit of time. For instance, in our society, he must have so much bread, so much meat, so much of a number of different foods every day, so much beer or wine or spirits (or, if he be too weak to consume these) so much tea or coffee or what not; a sufficient amount of somewhat complicated clothing, all to last over such and such an amount of time; and a sufficiency of fuel, housing, and all the rest of it, also to last a certain time.
Now this transformation of environment called “The Production of Wealth” is obviously only possible through the use of the instruments of production. A family can only live conformably to its human nature (that is, without undue suffering) in a given civilization on condition that it receive securely and constantly so much of this varied wealth for its consumption. But the wealth can only come into existence through the manipulating of natural forces by certain instruments; and there must also be an existing store of food and clothing and housing and the rest of it so that human beings may carry on during the process of production. These stores of wealth, these instruments and these natural forces are the Means of Production.
It is obvious that whoever controls the means of production controls the supply of wealth. If, therefore, the means for the production of that wealth which a family needs are in the control of others than the family, the family will be dependent upon those others; it will not be economically free.”
So my question to Aaron and the other Catholic free marketeers is this: Why should the business be the most important economic beneficiary in society, rather than the family? Set aside for a moment the system that we have - what should the ideal system be? Shouldn’t society seek to provide opportunities to make men owners, to possess private property of their own, to be able to provide for their families adequately and with some measure of comfort? Or do you think that the dog-eat-dog system is best, and that cheap wages, sky-high CEO pay and the economic advantages of globalization are the best thing for men?
