What Constitutes Fair And Non-discriminatory Pay?

[homeschoolmom]

But how do we decide who is in need of a better salary? What if the single person is supporting an elderly parent, but it doesn't happen to be known by the employer? As much as I would like to benefit from my dh making more simply because he's the dad among single co-workers, that doesn't seem right to me.

 

eta: and then what happens when the dad's kids move out? You make him take a pay cut?

[WillT]

I like it in theory, but the practical implementation would be a bear. I agree with homeschoolmom. What about when the kids move out? Or if they get a summer job? Seems like it would take a lot of work on someone's part to figure it all out.

[WillT]

I like it in theory, but the practical implementation would be a bear. I agree with homeschoolmom. What about when the kids move out? Or if they get a summer job? Seems like it would take a lot of work on someone's part to figure it all out.

[WillT]

I like it in theory, but the practical implementation would be a bear. I agree with homeschoolmom. What about when the kids move out? Or if they get a summer job? Seems like it would take a lot of work on someone's part to figure it all out.

[zabbazooey]

No, no, no. The dad of 3 is not going to get paid more than I, a single woman with no children. I'm sorry, that is just unfair and unethical. 

 

They shouldn't get paid more because they chose to pop out 4 kids, if they're taking care of a parent, etc.

 

You should be paid more on MERIT and EXPERIENCE. I shouldn't be penalized because I have no dependents. That is ridiculous!

 

 

Edited December 3, 2012 by zabbazooey

[Aloysius]

it is by no means apparent what the best way to realize the ideal of the just living wage would be, and I certainly don't have time to go into some of my more controversial ideas to hash them out here now; suffice it to say it's a difficult question and the means by which it is aimed at are very much debateable; but the moral issue is clear in Catholic social teaching: family and love over economics and meritocracy.  children should be a blessing, not a burden, and any economic system that causes them to be viewed more as a burden than a blessing has got something fundamentally wrong with its conception of human nature.  is there a simple solution to this?  no, I don't claim that there is, but it's certainly something we should all affirm as Catholics.

 

zabazooey, it is understandable that from your non-Catholic perspective, it's just popping out extra mouths to feed.  but from a Catholic perspective, it is the living out of the vocation of matrimony and it is the pinnacle of society, and thus so long as a family man is indeed choosing to work and doing a good job, he should be paid enough to be able to feed his family.  that may seem unfair to someone who does not value the family and children in the same way we do, from what was expressed in your post, your individualist perspective based on a meritocracy of atomized individuals in a cut-throat world doesn't have room for that type of living wage family-based economy.  I think that's sad because it raises our value in economics and labor above our value of the family and of love, and makes for a more cruel and mechanistic world that seems far less human to me.  Of course I think a single woman should get a just wage that is worth the value of her work, but I also don't think any one who is truly willing to work should be deprived of the ability to carry out the basic functions of his matrimonial vocation.

 

and ultimately, when you look at a father of four being paid enough to take care of his family compared to a single woman being paid some marginally smaller amount for the same job (of course she is also entitlted to both a living wage and a just wage so it wouldn't necessarily be all that much smaller depending on the specific context), the single woman is still going to have far more money for luxuries and comforts than the father who has to spend all that money on caring for his family.

[zabbazooey]

I used to be a devout Catholic, so yes, I understand the sacrament of matrimony and raising children. 

 

I work my rear end off, am going to school, et cetera. I don't care if you're doing God's will by having a large family or what your personal circumstances are. If you are going to get paid more than me, and we are doing equal work, you had better have a degree or more work experience. (I know in business today, unethical stuff happens like pay raises for dating bosses, this is just 'in a perfect world')

 

If I have more disposable income than the dad of 4, that's because I have chosen not to get married and be blessed with children just yet. That's not MY fault. 

 

Equal work, equal pay. PERIOD.

 

Whether you're male, female, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, married or not, children or not. 

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2012 by zabbazooey

[WillT]

I used to be a devout Catholic, so yes, I understand the sacrament of matrimony and raising children.

I work my rear end off, am going to school, et cetera. I don't care if you're doing God's will by having a large family or what your personal circumstances are. If you are going to get paid more than me, and we are doing equal work, you had better have a degree or more work experience. (I know in business today, unethical stuff happens like pay raises for dating bosses, this is just 'in a perfect world')

If I have more disposable income than the dad of 4, that's because I have chosen not to get married and be blessed with children just yet. That's not MY fault.

Equal work, equal pay. PERIOD.

Whether you're male, female, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, married or not, children or not.

I'm sympathetic to this idea, but it already doesn't work this way. When I worked retail, the employees with a bachelor's degree made more per hour than those who did not even though we did the same job. (Which was unloading freight, so it's not like the degree gave anyone an advantage) I guess what I'm saying is that we already encourage certain behaviors that have no bearing on job performance with higher pay, so why not others? What edge did my philosophy degree or my coworker's psychology degree give us that we deserved higher pay than the high school graduate that did the same job?

It's interesting to think about, even though I won't be working for wages in the future anyway.

[zabbazooey]

I think people with degrees should be given the advantage, even if it's retail! They went through the extra trouble to get the degree vs. someone with just a HS diploma. That's something you earn and takes years. If someone is motivated enough to go beyond high school to pursue and obtain a degree, they should be given higher pay (this doesn't always happen, though).

[zabbazooey]

And no disrespect meant, honestly.

 

But...with the whole dad of 4 getting higher pay vs single woman 

 

and people w/degrees getting higher pay vs. high school grads

 

Meeting someone, courting them, and marrying them takes no marketable skills. Neither does producing children. The act of caring for and raising them does, but getting to this point takes no real "professional" effort. Anyone could get married and have kids. 

 

Getting a degree takes a certain amount of scholastic intelligence, lots of studying, getting a degree no matter what major is marketable in some way. It sets you apart from the rest.

 

I am not saying that you don't have to be intelligent to have a family or anything like that, I am not quite sure how to word what I am trying to say.

 

Just because someone has a family doesn't entitle them to higher pay. 

Edited December 3, 2012 by zabbazooey

[Aloysius]

I used to be a devout Catholic, so yes, I understand the sacrament of matrimony and raising children. 

 

I work my rear end off, am going to school, et cetera. I don't care if you're doing God's will by having a large family or what your personal circumstances are. If you are going to get paid more than me, and we are doing equal work, you had better have a degree or more work experience. (I know in business today, unethical stuff happens like pay raises for dating bosses, this is just 'in a perfect world')

 

If I have more disposable income than the dad of 4, that's because I have chosen not to get married and be blessed with children just yet. That's not MY fault. 

 

Equal work, equal pay. PERIOD.

 

Whether you're male, female, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, married or not, children or not. 

 

That is a very individualistic attitude and in many ways sounds like it would, in a practical sense, represent the exhibition of unnecessary envy.  Just because you used to be a devout Catholic doesn't mean you quite get the worldview I'm talking about; maybe you do, maybe you don't, but many devout Catholics do not and you clearly do not hold to it now.  Anyway, I do not share your values in this regard.  Work is not some almighty thing to be worshipped, it is part of the curse of our fallen nature that we must work by the sweat of our brow and the only real reason for working is so that we can come to leisure and love and family.  I think you should be paid justly for your merits and work, sure, but never that someone who has a family and is honestly working for his living should ever be unable to provide for his family.  Only in very rare circumstances would this mean someone necessarily getting paid more than you by rule; and in any event, it all depends on the solution to the moral impetus for a just living wage.  one solution would be that the wages should increase from the standpoint of an employer taking into consideration the state in life of his employees (speaking on the level of a moral impetus that may or may not be backed up by some type of institutional policy either governmental or private), some solutions might simply involve good safety net social systems; I'm not here to advocate for a particular solution, just reminding the Catholics here that they are called to believe that there is a moral impetus for a just living wage based upon the duties of one's state in life for anyone and everyone who is willing to work.

 

Personally I really feel that this ideal should be largely universal, that no one should be so selfish or envious or obsessive about what they deserve for their work to disagree with this ideal, I suppose the only logical way is to view children as burdens that people should have to wait until they're economically ready for under the thumb of a sanctified economic system and thus to condemn people who have a few children when they have not satisfied the sacred cow of our economy and paid their dues to get into some idealized bourgeouise life (look how good that's turned out for the family so far)... actually, I think Jonathon Swift had the perfect solution for such wretched poor people who dared to engage in their rights as human beings called to marital life when they were too poor to take care of them; the practical way that ideal could be realized is another thing, very debateable and contestable; but I stand vehemently opposed to people who talk about how terrible it is for married people to have too many kids that they can't afford and all that garbage, because it's symptomatic of a system that makes children into burdens rather than assets and it is an ideology that is deadly to the family, which at its best is the only true safe harbor of freedom and love in a cruel mixed up world.  The whole inhuman world of labor should be flipped on its head to serve the much more human world of family, IMO; again, I am not saying exactly how, I leave that up for debate, but I am saying that as a matter of principle that's exactly how we should look at it.

[WillT]

But that isn't "equal work, equal pay". We did equal work for unequal pay. Yes, I worked hard for my degree (while raising a family) but it gave me no more "marketable skills" than anything else I've done in relation to that job. In fact, having a family gave me more marketable skills vis a vis retail work, now that I think about it.

At any rate, you must also consider than allowing a degree holding person to make a higher wage for the same work may unfairly disadvantage some. The high school graduate I mentioned came from a broken home, a POS high school, and the minimum wage retail job was the best he'd ever had. Not a heck of a lot of opportunity for him to go to college.

At any rate, the whole point being that the current system is rewarding one behavior that does not effect job performance so "equal work, equal pay" is a bit of a myth anyway.

[4588686]

No, no, no. The dad of 3 is not going to get paid more than I, a single woman with no children. I'm sorry, that is just unfair and unethical. 

 

They shouldn't get paid more because they chose to pop out 4 kids, if they're taking care of a parent, etc.

 

You should be paid more on MERIT and EXPERIENCE. I shouldn't be penalized because I have no dependents. That is ridiculous!

 

 

How are you being penalized by being allocated resources based on need?  You're world view just seems kind of self-indulgent.  What do you do for a living?  

[zabbazooey]

I guess I am an individualist. It was encouraged growing up, at 16 I was paying for everything myself at my dad's, minus the rent and utilities. I have a very small family so I guess I never really was exposed to collectivism.

It's a cruel harsh world out there. Our society would never implement such a policy nowadays. It may not be fair in your eyes if the dad of 4 doesn't make more or even with his circumstances a HS grad getting paid less than the college grad. But that's how it goes.

I'm glad I live where I live. I would not enjoy living in a collectivist society.

[4588686]

And no disrespect meant, honestly.

 

But...with the whole dad of 4 getting higher pay vs single woman 

 

and people w/degrees getting higher pay vs. high school grads

 

Meeting someone, courting them, and marrying them takes no marketable skills. Neither does producing children. The act of caring for and raising them does, but getting to this point takes no real "professional" effort. Anyone could get married and have kids. 

 

Getting a degree takes a certain amount of scholastic intelligence, lots of studying, getting a degree no matter what major is marketable in some way. It sets you apart from the rest.

 

I am not saying that you don't have to be intelligent to have a family or anything like that, I am not quite sure how to word what I am trying to say.

 

Just because someone has a family doesn't entitle them to higher pay. 

 

 

I'm currently working in a retail job while I'm applying for my next job after working for a political campaign.  I also have a degree from one of the best schools in the country have done grant-work overseas and domestically.  I have a good resume that should make me very marketable.  You know what any of that has to do with my current job?  As much as I can figure, jack-poo.  The truth is that most people can do most jobs about as well as anybody else, degree and scholastic accomplishments or not.  Do some people put in more effort?  Sure.  But does it override a child's right to have a decent upbringing that gives them a chance of making it in our rough and tumble world?  I don't think so.