Inequality

Recently saw an article about P&O paying staff around £5 an hour on international waters, even though it's a UK company and the ferries were sometimes going to and from the UK. The minimum wage in the UK is just over £11 currently, less than half. The ceo of P&O however has a wage of 320k a year and was paid a bonus last year bring his yearly wage up to half a million pounds. Unfortunately not illegal though.

A couple of weeks ago my dad asked me to call Virgin for him because their bill went up to £63 from around £34. So I called, got through to a girl from the Philippines who I could just about understand and eventually got their bill down to £30. After the P&O story It got me thinking how much the girl in the Philippines was getting paid to deal with a UK company... So I googled it. Wage ranged from £300-400 a month. That's less than the unemployed get here and I've been to the Philippines, it's not a lot there.

Countries are obviously free to set their own minimum wage but should there be an international minimum when workers are employed by companies based in other countries and especially when they're dealing with customers from those countries like the girl from the Philippines working for Virgin?

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An interesting topic Trev. NHL hockey players are paid in U.S. funds no matter what country they are from when playing for U.S. teams which the majority consist of now. All our best players in Canada and around the world for that matter play on U.S. Hockey teams because they can make more money. We are even losing our Dr.'s and Nurses to the U.S. because they can make more money.

-VR

Where lies the balance of the inequality of incomes? The middle ground, a living wage, which is a position where one is not too rich nor too poor.

Economic welfare equally for all is the ideal, but as many economists will argue, it does not work in the real world. "Perfect equality", as one notable economist once said, "is a chimera, all we can do is to diminish inequality.”

Another very notable Economist put the matter thus: "Sell all you have and give it to the poor." This simple economic strategy will make everyone poor by eliminating the rich, and therefore we would have a perfect equality by all being equality poor by the redistribution of the material goods.

Unfortunately, the driving force of Evolution drives a hard bargain for the weak, the poor. Economical power corrupts, just as any other sort of power does.

Is there more, or less, poverty in today's world in respect to any time in the past? As long as we can say that there are rich and there are poor, we have inequality of income.

@PettyTalk said
Where lies the balance of the inequality of incomes? The middle ground, a living wage, which is a position where one is not too rich nor too poor.

Economic welfare equally for all is the ideal, but as many economists will argue, it does not work in the real world. "Perfect equality", as one notable economist once said, "is a chimera, all we can do is to diminish inequa ...[text shortened]... he past? As long as we can say that there are rich and there are poor, we have inequality of income.

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but should there be an international minimum when workers are employed by companies based in other countries and especially when they're dealing with customers from those countries


This is a noble idea that I would support but it's not going to happen. Companies and their flesh-eating lawyers will find (or manufacture) a way to shaft mid and low-level grunts out of a living wage. It's done everyday. As my father one said: "They'll spend half a million dollars to cheat the working man out of a nickel"

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@Very-Rusty said
No one said it was fair, but does happen. I used the NHL as an example, but no one is twisting their arms to go play in the U.S., they go of their own free will as they can make more money. As I've said many times, Money is Power!

-VR

@A-Unique-Nickname said
You missed the point. That wasn't the idea. Do you think it's fair for workers in the UK or the Philippines that a company serving UK customers such as virgin can move their customer service to countries where they can pay about 1/5 less than they would do if they were based in the UK?

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