this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Price inflation is prices being increased, and prices are set by vendors. Whatever other changes also may be occurring, raising prices is a choice made by vendors or manufacturers to raise their profits.
Thus, your objection is not broadly meaningful.
When workers have more income, prices may tend to rise as a ramification under our current systems. Workers fight for better wages, however, because employers profit from the labor workers provide, instead of allowing them to realize the full value of their labor. Thus, workers fight for higher wages, and regardless of inflation, continue fighting for higher wages.
Placing blame for inflation on higher income for workers obfuscates broader understanding over the structure of our society.
Anyone concerned with the workers' struggle may have reason to advocate for broader measures to control inflation, but not among them is repressing the fight for higher wages.
All value in society is generated by the labor provided by workers. Support workers, by supporting their struggle to realize the full value of their labor.
From a response I wrote to another commenter:
Your are not engaging the substance of the discussion, as much as reiterating explanations you have encountered in other contexts, and which you have not understood adequately to apply more generally.
We can try another approach.
A living wage is an income that supports a particular standard of living considered socially as an acceptable base. Therefore, the nominal value for the living wage at any time will depend on the price of goods.
Even if the price of goods rises, that is, if inflation is occurring, there will always exist some nominal value suitable to be considered the living wage. Anyone who has an income equal to or greater than the value, at some particular moment in time, will have, at the particular moment, a living wage.
The nominal value of the living wage is not fixed, but rather adjusted over time.
Therefore, a living wage and inflation are not incompatible.