Ever seen someone doing their “unskilled job” all their life? It’s just fucking magic!
The truth is that capitalists hate skilled workers, because those workers have bargaining power. This is why they love the sort of automation which completely removes workers or thought from the equation, even if the ultimate solution is multiple times more expensive or less competent than before.
Nothing is more infuriating to a boss, than a worker that can talk back with experience.
Some jobs require more skill, and some workers are more skilled. You can’t get around that fact. That doesn’t mean anyone should be making poverty wages. I think it’s fair though that workers are paid more for learning skills. That can be either though paying them more at work, or paying them while they are in education. Note I don’t just mean free education, I mean actually giving them money to study. That’s the only way to make paying skilled and unskilled workers the same a fair system.
I disagree. A skill is a skill. Some are more skilled than others IN THE SAME SKILL. You cannot objectively compare a different skill with another. If a skill required to do surgery is “more” than flipping a burger, then being good at surgery means you are magically good at flipping burgers, but that is not the case.
It’s “more” in the sense that I learned how to flip burgers in a day. Can’t say I can learn to do surgery in a day.
Then I suggest using the word more valuable skill than being more skilled. More valuable skill since it implies rarity and not some sort of hierarchy. That’s my take anyways from the word “some jobs require more skill”.
Now you’re just being pedantic.
Well, yeah. I guess it is because I am often jumping fields because otherwise it can get confusing when switching context (I am a mechatronics engineer, so a blend of mechanical, electrical, control system, and programming)
What does that have to do with being pedantic?
Habit from work
I don’t think you know what pedantic means. Or unskilled.
Some skills take longer to acquire. Much longer. Some require certain aptitudes. As you say you can be more skilled than another worker at the same job, because you have more experience, training, aptitude, or you just care more. How is paying them all the same in any way fair?
Oh yes and some people have a greater number of skills than others. How is that not being more skilled than another?
I am not saying we should pay them the same?
So you were just being pedantic then?
Yes, sorry
I think the big part of it is the required time it takes to be considered competent. Like for arguments sake lets throw out cost of education. The amount of time and effort it takes to be considered a competent surgan is hundreds of times longer than training a competent burger flipper.
Even with grilling there is different skill levels. A professional chef/smoker takes a long time to hone their art.
I think everyone should be paid a living wage, but when people throw trained professionals that require years of experience in with cashiers or fast food cooks it really subtracts from their argument.
We should be trying to elevate all jobs to a living wage while recognizing some jobs are just harder. Otherwise no one will listen.