Economic corruption

"That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages." - Adam Smith

I don't even know that admiration toward the rich is that common. There is certainly fascination and envy,  and maybe some assumption that getting there involved hard work or intelligence or some kind of savvy (though that can fall apart really quickly on further examination). Maybe I just can't imagine other people being admiring because I so often feel utter contempt.

I do see a lot of condemnation of the poor.

One really irritating memory that comes up is John Schnatter living in a mansion with its own golf course, causing Mitt Romney to think Schnatter had done really well for himself. At the same time Romney thought that while it was nice that one income used to support a family, now a couple needed two or three jobs between them to have kids, and that was fine. Schnatter meanwhile thought that it was impossible to give his employees healthcare because it would require charging an extra 8 cents per pizza. Even though it would really only have required a 2 cent increase, and even though he had the massive house and grounds, when Schnatter got some criticism for his poor math skills and greed, at least one person was trying to drum up support for him and get more people going to Papa John's lest the poor man suffer. Apparently unbridled capitalism is not its own reward.

Schnatter can make a lot of money, but it requires a lot of employees. No matter how hard he works, they also have to work or he cannot successfully maintain a large chain of pizza stores selling just about the worst pizza out there. Healthcare seems like a reasonable reward for those people on whom his success his based, and not even that expensive. However, it's not just that Schnatter didn't find it necessary: the very suggestion made him angry.

(More recent developments in terms of who is and is not on the company's board don't change that.)

On a much smaller scale, I see small business owners complaining any time there is talk about increasing the minimum wage. They are barely scraping by, they have so much overhead, and why should this person whose labor makes their business possible receive compensation that allows them to live?

(No, they don't phrase the last bit that way. The rest is pretty verbatim.)

A larger discussion about economics and how to level the playing field between different size businesses (and if that should be a thing) will have to wait, but there is one business that I want to talk about in more depth. I am going to have to leave some details deliberately vague.

I will say that it is a business with more than four and fewer than fifty employees. After the economic downturn in 2008, they lost many clients. While they did not have to let many employees go, there were cut hours. They also cut several benefits, like paid time off. Employees generally went along with it because they understood that the money wasn't there.

Then the money came back. Lost business was made up and increased, and certainly some of the growing customer loyalty was due to excellent customer service. Hours went back up pretty quickly, but even after a few years those benefits that had been temporarily put on hold didn't come back.

In addition, the owners started becoming more absentee themselves. They had some expensive habits which often required long weekends. How can you really enjoy your skiing weekend or season tickets if you wait until everyone else is on the road?

To make up for these absences, some employees started getting more authority. That could have been fine, except that they tended to rudely lord that authority over the other employees, making the workplace much less fun. The supervisors did have skills that could be put to good use, but they needed more oversight and the owners were getting less and less interested in doing the work. They also became less interested in spending any money that was not absolutely necessary on the employees.

Those lost benefits were never required; they were just nice things to have that employers offer in a competitive environment where you need more incentives. However, there were other things that were legally required that they skimped on too. After all, they were a small business (under 50 employees) and some of those things were too hard. Employees that left often had grounds for lawsuits and Bureau of Labor and Industries complaints. Not everyone pursued them because that takes effort, patience, and often a lawyer which will cut into any benefit you get. Still, some did, and the owners did not change their practices to prevent future complaints. Even with a loss here and there, they knew the odds were in their favor.

The most important thing is that even though going over this without the specifics you can see evidence of greed, dishonesty, poor business practices and even some laziness, the problem was always the employees, or former employees. Creating and running profitable programs inspired no gratitude, just resentment when someone moved on.

And these are not even "crazy rich" people. I think they would probably just be considered well-off, and possibly lauded for being job creators.

What I want to be clear on is it is not merely that their business success was not the result of personal virtues, but the level of success they achieved actually corrupted them. I don't think it has to be that way, but sometimes that's how it works out. More legal protections for employees and greater enforcement could improve things, but that's just not the case.

So here's my question as we go over some more Black History month reading: if people can be that unappreciative, exploitative, and resentful of people who are only at will employees that have accepted the offers and the paychecks, but can reject those terms at any time (knowing that other economic conditions can make that very difficult), how bad do you think people get when they own the source of their income?

ETA, this seems relevant: https://www.thedailybeast.com/amazon-is-worth-dollar1-trillion-its-workers-are-on-food-stamps?ref=home