Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Mr. Ford, meet Boeing

You know how it's become a sort of cliche/folk-economics to say that "You should pay your workers enough so that they can buy the product you sell?" It's supposed to be what gave Henry Ford I his tremendous success with the Model T, and has become a staple of union bargaining.

For a recent example of this line of thought, here's none other than (former Secretary of Labor) Robert Reich arguing it, complete with reference to the Model T story.

Well, it recently occurred to me how underpaid I am. My employer modifies and sells large aircraft. No way can I afford that!!!

Did somebody say "raise"?

(This post made entirely without use of the mouse -- including for looking up and copying over links -- thanks to the use of the Firefox Pentadactyl extension. Give it a whirl!)

Addendum: To clarify, Boeing is not my employer, just a synecdoche for large aircraft manufacturers in general.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pentadactyl's a lot less catchy than Vimperator.

zdk said...

It works both ways, too.

I'm a PhD student studying the murine microbiome, which basically means I study poop. Does this mean my university is justified in paying me crap?

Well in my case, this is actually what happens... its called a grad student stipend.