Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of WealthRyan, John A. (John Augustine)
PhilosophyChristian
Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth
Ryan, John A. (John Augustine)
Economic history; Income distribution -- Moral and ethical aspects; Wealth -- Religious aspects
The unusual sacrifices that deserve extra compensation are connected
with the costs of industrial functions and the disagreeable character
of occupations. Under the first head are included the expense of
industrial training and the debilitating effects of the work. Not only
justice to the worker but a farsighted view of social welfare, dictate
that all unusual costs of preparation for an industrial craft or
profession should be repaid in the form of unusual compensation. This
means something more than a living wage. For the same reasons the
unusual hazards and disability resulting from industrial accidents and
diseases should be provided for by higher remuneration. In the absence
of such provision, these costs will have to be borne by parents, by
society in the form of charitable relief, or by the worker himself
through unnecessary suffering and incapacity. The industry that does
not provide for all these costs is a social parasite, the workers in
it are deprived of just compensation for their unusual sacrifices, and
society suffers a considerable loss through industrial friction and
diminished productive efficiency. In so far, however, as any of the
foregoing occupational costs are borne by society, as in the matter of
industrial education, or by the employer, as by the devices of
accident compensation or sickness insurance, they do not demand
provision in the form of extra wages.
Other unusual sacrifices that entitle the worker to more than living
wages, are inherent in disagreeable or despised occupations. The
scavenger and the bootblack ought to get more than the performers of
most other unskilled tasks. On the principles of comparative
individual desert, they should receive larger remuneration than many
persons who are engaged upon skilled but relatively pleasant kinds of
work. For if they were given the choice of expending the time and
money required to fit them for the latter tasks, or of taking up
immediately their present disagreeable labour, they would select the
more pleasant occupations, for the same or even a smaller
remuneration. And the majority of those who are now in the more
skilled occupations would make the same choice. Hence the sacrifices
inherent in disagreeable kinds of work are in many cases as great as
or greater than the sacrifices of preparation for the more pleasant
tasks; consequently the doers of the former are relatively underpaid.
If all wages were regulated by some supreme authority according to the
principles of complete justice, the workers in disagreeable
occupations would receive something more than living wages. Nor would
this determination of rewards be in any way contrary to social welfare
or the principle of maximum net results; for the superior
attractiveness of the other kinds of work would draw a sufficient
supply of labour to offset the advantage conferred by higher wages
upon the disagreeable occupations. The main reason why the latter kind
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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