A QuietJohn consideration
The most dangerous of concepts.
The notion of responsibility is one of paradox. People want what it purportedly offers yet consistently run away from it. Hierarchy creates order and fear.
Many only pay minimum wage because the legislation forces them to. Some say wages should be determined by "market forces", some will pay as much as the business can afford. Any given business may genuinely be unable to afford to pay more than minimum wage and Statutory Sick Pay.
The UK are relative new-comers to minimum wage legislation, (1999), it started in New Zealand a hundred years earlier (1896), and the Americans have had minimum wage legislation since 1938. The Chinese joined in in 2004, but many European countries have chosen not to follow suit.
Putting aside individual personal circumstances your income dominates your standard of living. It also has a substantial influence on individual psychological well-being. There are circumstances and individual desires that may lead some to accept minimal financial reward for a job or lifestyle they wish to persue.
Be that as it may, the majority on minimum wages will be regarded as unskilled workers, putting them at the bottom of a social hierarchy. They will be told as schoolchildren that that is where those who do not achieve the required examination success risk remaining, using the fear of social hierarchy to manipulate their attitudes. Hierarchy creates order and fear. The young people refered to in the article on Brussels sprouts, the ones bemoaning government ministers and high ranking education officials, were worried about not getting the A-star A-level grades to allow them to avoid the "unskilled" route into relative poverty.
The "semi-skilled" and the "skilled" portions of the labour force are for the most part very reluctent to tumble down the hierarchy into "unskilled" jobs.
The primary reason for this is that they DO NOT WANT THE RESPONSIBILITY.
They do not want the responsibility that comes with a budget that can seriously restrict choices, from the homes they can/cannot afford to live in to the cars they can/cannot afford to drive, the holidays they may/may not take, to the social status that comes with the responsibility of trying to make a home on the minimum the government has decreed they need to survive.
We educate our children to strive to leave those RESPONSIBILITIES behind.
The desire to rid oneself of the responsibility, and it is a theme that runs throughout the Hierarchy, raises the obvious question-
What sort of responsibility do people really want?
Before we persue that question, lets consider those at the other end of the scale, the leaders of industry, banking, politics and power, and ask the question-
What is it about their responsibilities that make them belief they deserve a higher standard of living that the rest of us?
This is an important psychological senario.
The gambling empire, Bet365, claims it is "appropriate and fair" to provide its highest paid director a pre-tax £48,000 per hour (forty-eight thousand pounds an hour), twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, as a financial reward for purportedly steering the companies success.
The money comes from millions of people across the world hoping a financial gamble will pay off, failing, and losing their stake-money to Bet365.
The company refuses to disclose how those losses are distributed across the world, claiming that "disclosing regional income would be severely predudicial to the group."
This is a topic that is very dangerous to try taking a high moral stance on, but note that gambling, for almost all participants offers financial loss in return for hopes lost. The rewards... are no rewards at all.
The psychology of me getting more than you
Desolation sound, British Columbia.
There is a great deal of responsibility that comes with being regarded as at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Those responsibilities are financial, pychological, and consequently practical. Firstly you must be able to survive on the minimum wage. Living with the psychological pressures that can involve, with the rich tempting you into debt or gambling, and a social hierarchy based on comparison, epitomised by the status of your mobile phone.
Many get by comfortably enough...
PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS- Profound truths Vivamus nec odio ac ligula congue feugiat at vitae leo. Aenean sem justo, finibus sed dui eu, accumsan facilisis dolor. Fusce quis dui eget odio iaculis aliquam vel sed velit. Nulla pellentesque posuere semper. Nulla eu sagittis lorem, a auctor nulla. Sed ac condimentum orci, ac varius ante. Nunc blandit quam sit amet sollicitudin sodales.