Hospital cleaners create more value than bankers
December 14, 2009 - 5:39pm
Hospital cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, a study suggests.
The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.
It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy.
They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8410489.stm
Seemingly obvious, but it is good to have it quantified.
With the exception of people in marketing, who doesn't produce more value than a banker?
Well, there's telephone sanitzers, but then again, there was that nasty plague. :)
Interesting, but I think some of their thinking is dodgy.
Ignoring the many assumptions that go into their assessments, they're neglecting the law of supply and demand. Hospital cleaners aren't paid less than bankers because someone (erroneously) decided that hospital cleaners don't add value; hospital cleaning is just one of those jobs that nearly anyone can do.
The government, not tax accountants, make the laws that govern taxation. While every pound a tax accountant saves a client does not go to the government, it's also a pound that should not have gone to the government anyway, unless the tax accountant is suggesting fraud.
Can't really comment on the others, as they don't really explain how the white collar jobs destroy value.
Good points Snert.
Their complaint about taxes is especially silly. Do people also "destroy" value if they claim a deduction for charitable donations? What about putting money into an RRSP? I suppose next they'll say people who use calculators "destroy" value by avoiding mathematical errors on their returns. The only time value is "destroyed" is if there is fraud, but it's clear that they're insinuating that anyone who engages in any tax planning is a crook.
Interesting, but I think some of their thinking is dodgy.
Ignoring the many assumptions that go into their assessments, they're neglecting the law of supply and demand. Hospital cleaners aren't paid less than bankers because someone (erroneously) decided that hospital cleaners don't add value; hospital cleaning is just one of those jobs that nearly anyone can do.
But as US economist Dean Baker described in http://conservativenannystate.org :
Lowly paid workers for the most part cannot afford to pursue education and job training in the private sector to raise their productivity in a 21st century economy. Jobs for the ten percent or so of workers who are highly-paid professionals are insulated from free market forces for political reasons, whereas dog-eat-dog competition among low skilled and semi-skilled labour is encouraged under British-American free trade theory. ~Laissez-faire was planned - planning was not(Polanyi)
What they've done is to insert inputs for technology and obsolescence into neoliberal and now "neoclassico" economic theorizing in order to fit with British free trade theory. But it's not a scientific method for measuring evolving economies in terms of social structures or long-term trends. Capitalism is near-sighted in that it's oriented around satisfying month-to-month balance sheets and quarterly earnings projections. Everything else is subjugated to these short-term goals.
Hospital cleaners aren't paid less than bankers because someone (erroneously) decided that hospital cleaners don't add value; hospital cleaning is just one of those jobs that nearly anyone can do.
Exactly, Snert, and there's so very few with the ability to bring the economies of most of the world to the brink of total colapse, and that's why the bankers get the big bucks.
Ignoring the many assumptions that go into their assessments, they're neglecting the law of supply and demand. Hospital cleaners aren't paid less than bankers because someone (erroneously) decided that hospital cleaners don't add value; hospital cleaning is just one of those jobs that nearly anyone can do.
Actually it is you who neglect, or probably don't know, the labor theory of value. The wages of hospital cleaners are determined by the law of supply and demand. But that is not the issue. What the study confirms is that the act of socially necessary labor creates value over and above the wages paid to the cleaners. This is how profit can be made off the work of hospital cleaners. They produce $7 value for every $1 they are paid. The owners of the hospital pocket the difference. The bankers merely speculate with a part of the profit.
To say that nearly everyone can do hospital cleaning doesn't say anything. The issue you evade is why are bankers paid a thousand times more for doing nothing of value?
Have not read the thread and do not intend to do so.
Hospital cleaners earn $20 an hour.
Bankers earn $100 an hour.
But, using their output as a gauge changes the question.
The issue you evade is why are bankers paid a thousand times more for doing nothing of value?
Actually, we'd be far better off if bankers did nothing of value. Right now, thier value can only be measured with negative numbers.
I think I argued this a few months ago, with someone who had formal education in economics, and that person pointed out that economists don't like using the word "value" anymore.
And, I tend to agree with the economists; If I was an economist, that'd be a word I'd like to expunge from the vocabulary, just for reasons of self interest alone.
Have not read the thread and do not intend to do so.
Hospital cleaners earn $20 an hour.
Bankers earn $100 an hour.
But, using their output as a gauge changes the question.
Maybe in Canada. In the US hospital workers earn slightly more than minimum wage, about $7.50 per hour, bankers prob. earn close to 2000-3000 per hour.
I find it highly unlikely that your average banker is paid $4,000,000 to $6,000,000 (that's millions) a year.
Economist Michael Hudson says that the new business model has scrapped old world wealth creation. The new business model equates debt with wealth.
And a country like Bananada is a perfect host for financial parasites. We have massive amounts of real natural wealth which we can pay marauding transnational energy and other companies to take off our hands while Canadian banks finance foreign takeovers of Canadian crowns, corporations and valuable assets with Canadians' savings. And they will shift the burden of taxation further from corporations and banks to Canadians. And there are 33 million co-signers for the massive debts we accrue for the privilege of paying Exxon-Imperial, Syncrude, Encana etyc and dozens of other multinationals to take real wealth off our hands.
Debt is the new wealth creation. If it sounds Orwellian, it's because it is.
The issue you evade is why are bankers paid a thousand times more for doing nothing of value?
Actually, we'd be far better off if bankers did nothing of value. Right now, thier value can only be measured with negative numbers.
I think I argued this a few months ago, with. someone who had formal education in economics, and that person pointed out that economists don't like using the word "value" anymore.
And, I tend to agree with the economists; If I was an economist, that'd be a word I'd like to expunge from the vocabulary, just for reasons of self interest alone.
I can understand why modern economists don't talk about value. Their own value is close to, or less than zero. Here is an interesting quote from about 150 yrs. ago: "Little as Vulgar-Economy (i.e., Friedman, Greenspan, Bernanke et al.) knows about the nature of value, yet whenever it wishes to consider the phenomena of circulation in their purity, it assumes that supply and demand are equal, which amounts to this, that their effect is nil."
I find it highly unlikely that your average banker is paid $4,000,000 to $6,000,000 (that's millions) a year.
Oh really? Call up Blankfein at Goldman Sachs and see what he is paid.
I find it highly unlikely that your average banker is paid $4,000,000 to $6,000,000 (that's millions) a year.
Oh really? Call up Blankfein at Goldman Sachs and see what he is paid. These people get bonues of millions a year.
Yeah, uh, thanks.
Hospital cleaners are worth more because they keep hospital rooms clean.
It's dangerous work. Viruses are everywhere.
Thank you and good night, wherever you are.
Something is flashing "removable disk (e:)"; ought I to be concerned?
Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds.
Hey Bankers Row Bill, what did you kill
Leo Panitch wrote:
For anyone who thinks "VALUE" is somehow an outmoded idea, here is a quote from the Bureau of Economic Analysis,, the US govt. outfit charged with defining the holy grail of economic measurements, the GDP:
"...Gross domestic product (GDP)...is...the value of the goods and services produced by the U.S. economy in a given time period."
Ya but North American economies aren't ruled by supply and demand and haven't been for the last 100 years or more.
Oh, Fidel. I thought we were friends. Did you miss Economics 101?
Oh, Fidel. I thought we were friends. Did you miss Economics 101?
Offshore tax shelters, transfer pricing schemes etc have played a significant role in European and American economies for decades. Corporate profiteering as a result of bought and paid for governments play more of a role in pricing than does supply and demand voodoo. And it looks like Bananada suffers from swine flu an' all
Oh, Fidel. I thought we were friends. Did you miss Economics 101?
Offshore tax shelters, transfer pricing schemes etc have played a significant role in European and American economies for decades. Corporate profiteering as a result of bought and paid for governments play more of a role in pricing than does supply and demand voodoo. And it looks like Bananada suffers from swine flu an' all
Pie has a point. Most modern economists learned their trade in Econ. 101. Is it any wonder they don't have a clue what they are doing? Your own examples, tax shelters, etc. are only examples of extra costs added to a product, for example, bananas. United Fruit pays the pickers, say, 20 cents an hour or 2 cents a lb. They then sell the bananas to Walmart for 2.00 a lb. which then sells for 2.20 a lb. United Fruit may add 1.00 per lb for bribes, tax shelters, etc., but that is only an added cost. It's just a cost of doing business. They still make a huge profit, which comes from the original cost of labor.
Oh, Fidel. I thought we were friends. Did you miss Economics 101?
Offshore tax shelters, transfer pricing schemes etc have played a significant role in European and American economies for decades. Corporate profiteering as a result of bought and paid for governments play more of a role in pricing than does supply and demand voodoo. And it looks like Bananada suffers from swine flu an' all
Pie has a point.
So give me the conch.
BOB: Lord of the Flies. Grade 12 Education in BC. Support education. Fire Gordon Campbell.
Life goes on. Life goes on.
Enter the invisible fist of state capitalism. Robert MacNamara was once concerned about US corporations and rich people stashing too much money in Switzerland. That country's nationals told the Yanks that all the untaxed money salted away in their country was driving up Swizz currency artificially. And so MacNamara and their capos like Howard Hunt etc thought to plan overthrow of tiny Latin American countries and-or corrupt them irreparably. This level of coercion takes muscle of the kind that big business doesn't have and prefer taxpayers foot the bills for. In countries like pre-1959 Cuba, a US-backed mafia government in Havana was as much muscle as they needed. But in tiny island nations like Haiti, the CIA and US military were absolutely necessary in putting down peoples' rebellions about 20 times in the last century against intolerable US-backed kleptocracies. Military dictatorships then became necessary, and US military aid to corrupt US-backed dictatorships became the norm in Latin America and beyond. And so what we have today are several banks for holding corporate and other profits in Caribbean islands, Central America etc. Capitalists need safe havens for untaxed profits on everything from dirty oil to drug money.
Fidel, explain this to me as if you were talking to someone else. Me, for instance.
Pitch the story.
I listen for your footsteps.
Coming up the drive.
Does it mean you don't love me anymore.
I hear the clock ticking.
Hospitals have owners?
I bet you'd make a mint owning a hospital.
I'm not evading that at all. Why? because banks, unlike hospitals, ARE privately owned, and the boards of said banks are free to set whatever salaries they wish. Presumably, in exchange for lots of money, the well paid bankers help the bank earn far more money than they get paid, and the bank therefore comes out ahead.
That said, I think it's apples and oranges to compare workers who work for the public, like hospital cleaners, with workers who are privately employed, for the purposes of demonstrating that the public worker benefits the public more. Huge surprise! One worker's job is to help the public, the other's is to help their employer, and the first one helps the public more! Wow! That's really amazing, isn't it?? That's almost as shocking as the discovery that people who produce food contribute more to health than people who produce sunglasses and flipflops!
And, I tend to agree with the economists; If I was an economist, that'd be a word I'd like to expunge from the vocabulary, just for reasons of self interest alone.
Or because it's such a subjective word.
Do sports stars add value? Some might say they do, by giving kids someone to look up to. Others might say they destroy value, by contributing to a culture of spectators rather than participants.
What about musicians? Do they add value? Some might say that their songs make us happy and allow us to dance. Others could just as plausibly say that they destroy value by encouraging us to waste money and resources on a CD when anyone can sing for free.
If you keep it simple, and just deal in tangible value, you can pass on having to go round and round the mulberry bush of consensus on what constitutes "value".
Do the investors who invest union pensions create or destroy value? What's your thinking on them, Tommy? Are they also parasitic speculators?
Too long, Snert.
Just doing one liners today.
Like for Minority Report:
Tom Cruise. I'm listening.
Futuristic. Ookkaayy.
Washington. Yeah.
Movie based on the works of a science fiction writer. Stop right there.
Next class: Sophie's Choice.
Do me a favour, Snert. Read your PMs. Carefully. I'm trying to shut the Internet down. Go Al Gore! You rock!
AND LET ME GIVE YOU SOME FREE ADVICE! (So that you have to take it.) Freedom of right, I mean, speech, is a right. Rights come with obligations. Unless you provide me with some compelling reason NOT to do so, Atlas Shrugged is about to get a fail. Says David Foster Wallace. Try that on wiki. Let them take away everything and when you have nothing, speak some babble fu about Ayn Rand. And I guarantee you that they will open the doors and you will walk away. With your head held high. And your human fucking rights. But no home or anything. Or God forbid we should provide you with some food. Animals eat food. But you smoke. And if you smoke, you are a sinner. And if you sin, nothing, nothing will help you. You will get so fucked up your philosophy professor will make sense. Hey, you say, don't go to school. I DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL. I dropped out in Grade 10 or 11 because my ADHD WAS OUT OF CONTROL! They forced me into the most awful jail ever created: the Ministry of Lands, Parks and Housing. I was 15 FUCKING YEARS OLD. Human rights now! Child abuse stops here. Ayn Rand is the bomb. Terrorist. Barack Obama, check your fucking email.
I'm so, so, so, so, so, so, so tired. Too tired to cut & Paste and baby that's tired. If you call 72 hours insomnia. BECAUSE THEY DON'T AT THE ERIC MARTIN PAVILION because they're FUCKING IDIOTS AND THEY INFORM THEIR DEBATE ON LUDICRUOUS (sp?) criteria that Rosenhan demolished in the 19fucking70s. I was born in 1966 or 1965 if you're Ayn Rand. Abolish BIRTH CERTIFICATES. wHAT? gOTTA GO. bART sIMPSON IS CALLING ME.
sORRY, WHAT???
Snert, snap out of it. Forget everything you ever learned. Join with me and SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET just in TIME FOR THE 2010 OLYMPICS! Oh, yeah, and FUCK YOU GORDON CAMPBELL!
Here is what kills me: if supply and demand should dictate worker's wages, why, during the recent construction boom in Vancouver, did our right wing government not allow construction workers' wages to continue to rise? Instead, they allowed companies to import workers from outside Canada, and pay those workers far less (in some cases less than min wage), deny them benefits or any benefit of citizenship, then ship them home afterward? The right supports the free market only when it works in favour of the corporation, never the worker. Supply and Demand is as a defense for labour rates is used very selectively by capitalists to explain the race to the bottom the middle and working classes.
PS: G Pie- you
Here is what kills me: if supply and demand should dictate worker's wages, why, during the recent construction boom in Vancouver, did our right wing government not allow construction workers' wages to continue to rise? Instead, they allowed companies to import workers from outside Canada, and pay those workers far less (in some cases less than min wage), deny them benefits or any benefit of citizenship, then ship them home afterward? The right supports the free market only when it works in favour of the corporation, never the worker. Supply and Demand is as a defense for labour rates is used very selectively by capitalists to explain the race to the bottom the middle and working classes.
PS: G Pie- you okay?
I find it highly unlikely that your average banker is paid $4,000,000 to $6,000,000 (that's millions) a year.
Oh really? Call up Blankfein at Goldman Sachs and see what he is paid.
Okay, that would be a banker. Not bankers.
For everyone else, the salary is quite high, even if you're not the head of a department, but not in the millions.
My guess would be that for some jobs, the existing supply of workers is simply not sufficient. Regardless of how much you pay one worker, that worker can only do the job of, well, one worker.
Suppose I'm hiring people to play professional baseball for me, but I can only find three people... at least six short of the bare minimum I need to form a team. Paying those three more isn't going to magically generate the needed six players. Now if it's a market situation (eg: they could choose to play for another team) then I'm certainly going to have to pay them well, certainly better than other teams offer to, if I want them to play for me, but if I want a full team, I'll have to import six more players from somewhere, yes?
Fine, taking Snert's argument that bankers have no responsibility to the public since they operate for private interests, let's take into consideration what role banking and credit plays in our economy.
Investments are made based on credit that is issued. Houses are bought, purchases are made, businesses are started, operated and expanded on credit. Jobs are created, labour and physical resources are spent based on how this credit is allocated. Banks along side government and private wealth are central in deciding who gets money and how it is spent. In a very real way banks are responsible for every bad investment that they back.
Additionally predatory lending to those with medium low incomes, total lack of access to credit for those with even lower incomes and favourable lending terms to those that already have wealth reinforces preexisting divisions between the rich and the poor.
Given the power that banks have one would very much like to see what could happen if lending were done with social interests at heart, so investments could be made for the public good. As much as I have a soft spot for private enterprise, I agree with the assertion that society would best served if banks were publicly owned.
Investments are made based on credit that is issued. Houses are bought, purchases are made, businesses are started, operated and expanded on credit. Jobs are created, labour and physical resources are spent based on how this credit is allocated. Banks along side government and private wealth are central in deciding who gets money and how it is spent. In a very real way banks are responsible for every bad investment that they back.
Sounds like they play a very important role and create a lot of value
Credit Unions are publicly owned, in a sense, yes? Owned by their members?
They could choose to lend money to those of limited income, and they could choose to offer the same interest rates regardless of income, couldn't they? Heck, shouldn't they?
I'll admit I'm far more familiar with conventional banks than with credit unions, so I'm not sure as to the extent in which they operate differently. However, according to OSFI Canadian banks have assets totaling $2.9 trillion while credit unions $19.6 billion. I'm not sure to which extent if any that there are credit unions not registered with OSFI. My understanding is that it may be possible if the credit union operates in only one province. Nonetheless it looks like banks are more than a hundred times larger than credit unions. That being said I think that banks have a much greater power to waste resources or promote useful investment in comparison to credit unions.
Now, you take this loan here to Ernie Bishop...You know, that fellow that sits around all day on his brains in his taxi. You know...I happen to know the bank turned down this loan, but he comes here and we're building him a house worth five thousand dollars. Why?
George is at the door of the office, holding his coat and papers, ready to leave.
GEORGE: Well, I handled that, Mr. Potter. You have all the papers there. His salary, insurance. I can personally vouch for his character.
POTTER (sarcastically): A friend of yours?
GEORGE: Yes, sir.
POTTER: You see, if you shoot pool with some employee here, you can come and borrow money. What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. And all because a few starry-eyed dreamers like Peter Bailey stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas. Now, I say...
George puts down his coat and comes around to the table, incensed by what Potter is saying about his father.
GEORGE: Just a minute -- just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You're right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was...Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what's wrong with that? Why...Here, you're all businessmen here. Doesn't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You...you said...What'd you say just a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken-down that they...Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about...they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you'll ever be!
So George Bailey's father was the first banker to foist subprime loans on people who really couldn't afford them? :)
I have a lot to say about It's a Wonderful Life, so don't get me started--but did you ever notice that the fantasy America George's angel shows him--the one where Mr. Potter was able to muscle out the small-time banks, thus creating a den of sin and excess where working people lose their homes and livelihood--is a lot more like the "real" America we all live in? Which is the fantasy, and which the dream? The opening shot which declares "YOU ARE NOW IN BEDFORD FALLS" should read instead "CECI N'EST PAS BEDFORD FALLS."
Um no. Mr. Bailey's loans actually helped people at the expense of personal profit, sub-prime loans were predatory in nature and never designed to do so. Thus highlighting some of the problems associated with for profit banking.
if I want them to play for me, but if I want a full team, I'll have to import six more players from somewhere, yes?
Well, you would like to "import" humans like they were t-shirts. Thanks to years of fighting for collective bargaining and free agency owners like you have to bargain in good faith with the players, which means you can't exploit the players. That still leaves plenty of people you can exploit, like minor league players, assistant coaches, concession workers, stadium workers, etc., etc. When these people own their own labor and the products of their own labor (as the big players do now) then they will own the profits from their labor. Or as Steinbrenner would say, "Apres moi, le deluge." Too bad they did away with the guillotine.
Do the investors who invest union pensions create or destroy value? What's your thinking on them, Tommy? Are they also parasitic speculators?
They can be. Depends on what they invest in, and what value that investment creates. If an investment creates jobs, creates something tangeable, great! If it's just investing in something speculative, that is, driving up the price of something without adding any tangeable value, then it's parasitic.
As we've seen so dramatically lately, Banks and other financial companies have some pretty wide lattitude, some fairly significant priveleges granted from government that can't honestly be described in a normal employer/employee relationship that you described.
We give banks unfettered access to the halls of power. While we all have freedom of expression, their voices drown out ours to the point where it could fairly be said that they deprive us of our freedom of expression.
They get from us the laws they want when they want them, how they want them. The trade on that, if there should be one in the first place, is that their actions guide the economy and we all benifit.
Look around you.
Seems to me they are not living up to their part of the bargain at the moment.
Now, it could be argued that Canadian banks were much better stewards than their British or American counterparts. But that's not for lack of trying on their part, and if the near collapse of the last year hadn't intervened, they would have been going down the same sub prime path thanks to the deregulation that their employee, Jimmy Flaherty always talked about.
Even today, the banks and lending institutions want to continue to lend people money who shouldn't have money loaned to them in the first place.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, the white collar types who thought that just anybody can clean a hospital are trying to figure out if there is any connection between contracting out to cheap janitorial services, and post operative infections.
Credit Unions are publicly owned, in a sense, yes? Owned by their members?
They could choose to lend money to those of limited income, and they could choose to offer the same interest rates regardless of income, couldn't they? Heck, shouldn't they?
Well, not if they want to stay in business. Credit unions are non-profit and are protected by the FDIC. They don't pay income taxes (although the members do on share profits.) There have been few credit union failures in the latest crisis. However, I think they are getting stimulus money. A local credit union near me is paying 5.25 on a checking account. Within five miles of me there are at least 5 credit unions. Credit unions are a good deal which is why the big banks hate them.