In my last post I was pretty hard on both the Republican, and the Democratic parties, and I feel rightly so. But there are others that I feel are complicit in this whole mess of a comparatively frozen job market, and excessively endless process of unemployment benefits. The narrow-minded politicians that pollute the halls of Congress with their demagogic tirades promoting either the Democrats' socialist values, or the Republicans' big business profit-stimulating tax breaks are equally guilty of callously destroying the middle-class capacity to survive in a truly robust economy. But they have had lots of help along the way. Culture-crushing greed is not confined to Congress, it is just more obvious there, because our representatives foolishly believe that their Constitutionally mandated terms protect them from responsibility for their greedy, self-serving actions. They feel that they merely have to promote popular legislation every two years, for Representatives, and every six years for Senators to protect them from the consequences of their destructive demagogic legislation the rest of the time. They are foolishly wrong, as there is definitely a God who is keeping score, and will one day settle accounts with those who do not repent.
However, in reading over the text of Matthew 20, today, I was struck by the multiple ways in which God ( through Jesus, in this case) frequently ties messages together to give valuable lessons on different levels. He frequently gives messages that relate to us not only on spiritual levels, but frequently on physical, or mental, and emotional levels as well. But sometimes the spiritual message is so important that we can easily miss the other levels, if we are not careful. Such is the case with Matthew 20, I believe.
Here Jesus recounts His parable of the owner of a vineyard who goes out early in the morning to hire his day-laborers, agreeing with them all for a wage of a penny ( which in that day was considered a fair wage for a day's labor). Later he goes out again at 9:00, 12:00, and 3:00 and finds other men who haven't yet been hired, so he hires them at the same daily wage. He does the same at 5:00, even though the work-day is apparently over at 6:00 pm. The men who were hired first are outraged when they discover that those who were hired last will receive the full wage that they themselves agreed to. They seem to feel that they should be paid more, if he wants to pay the others a day's wage, since they worked longer. He refuses, without much explanation, but I think I know what his thinking is all about, on a material level that can be applied to modern-day business practices. Ignoring the complex spiritual issues here, there are practical business issues that seem to be ignored in commerce today.
First, we must realize that the main consideration of the owner of the vineyard was getting his grapes picked as quickly and efficiently as possible, in order to maximize his potential profits. Obviously, the more hands he had doing the job, the faster the job would get done. But there is a spiritual issue here that is frequently ignored, even by business people who see it carried out all the time. That is the exponential increase in the amount of labor that can be produced by additional employees, if we theoretically presume that each laborer is capable of producing at exactly the same rate, individually. The miracle here is that we assume that ten laborers, of theoretically equal production capacity would obviously produce ten times the amount of production as one. Then twenty such laborers should produce twenty times the amount of production, right? The same rate applies for thirty, forty, and fifty laborers, etc. But that just isn't so.
Adam Smith, who is generally considered to be the "founder" of "modern" economics, even though he lived in the 18th century, concluded after studying the labor practices of workers at a pencil factory of his day that more laborers produced more products than a mere multiplication of there number's labor. In other words, ten extra laborers would produce more than ten times the products. And twenty extra laborers would produce more than twice the amount that the ten extra laborers could produce. There seemed to be a miraculous exponential increase in the EXTRA PRODUCTION of each additional laborer, above and beyond the expected multiplied effect of his individual capacity. And the more additional laborers, the greater INCREASE in that extra production. It increased exponentially, not by simple multiplication. Adam Smith, who apparently was not afraid to express his Christian values in the discussion of economic principles ( as many seem to be today) referred to this phenomenon as, "The Invisible Hand of God". Apparently, Jesus was saying that this owner of the vineyard was fully aware of this miraculous principle, and therefore it was worth the cost of hiring extra labor, even at the late hour. He felt that the potential profits would more than cover the apparently wasteful expense. The reason he agreed to pay a full day's wages to the last hires was apparently because they would not be interested in working for one hour's equivalent of that wage. They needed a full day's wage just to meet their daily expenses, or they wouldn't be available to work in the future. Starvation has a winnowing effect upon any labor force.
The moral I'm trying to apply to today's business practices from this is that big business should stop lobbying Congress for legislation that allows them to offer lower wages at reduced hours, and at the same time lobby for reduction of unemployment benefits to force an increase in the available labor force, by making many people desperate for any employment ( just to survive), that will only be available for a comparative few, at wages that won't meet their minimum daily needs. Yes, applying Chinese slave-labor employment practices will profit them initially, but sooner, or later some competitor will discover that paying a wage that their employees can survive on will greatly increase their company's individual labor market, at the expense of their competitor's. Then their increased production will bring increased profits, and eventually increased market share. The moral approach is to extend reasonable benefits long enough for businesses to get so desperate for help that they will be willing to pay a wage that people can survive upon. I'm not talking about those idiot labor unions who think McDonalds employees should get $15.00 per hour, as "minimum wages". There needs to be a reasonable balance between what the employees need and what the employers can pay. That balance will be discovered when employers get off their greedy little behinds, and take a risk by raising the wages they're offering to the point that those invisible job-seekers start crawling out of the woodwork. Then they can experience the miracle of exponential increase in productivity that will more than pay for the increase in salaries. But cutting the unemployment benefits prematurely eliminates the incentive for businesses to offer decent salaries, without giving employees the wages they need to survive. If only Congress could be made to understand this.
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