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I understand the distinction. To clarify, I initially intended "properly value work" to refer to economic value, not moral value. The fact that employers benefit from low wage workers who are productive because they are healthy, partially thanks to food stamps and Medicaid, demonstrates they're not paying the real cost of that labor. However, I believe both ways of talking about "proper value" is correct (moral and economic). In regards to your comment that "You don't compromise your value of hard work by choosing to pay low wages, you just lack charity." Perhaps to a business owner in a competitive market, paying more than prevailing rate would feel that way. But on a broad societal level, it's not charity to hold that everyone who works full-time should at least earn a lower middle class subsistence. If this were polled, broad majorities of progressives, conservatives, and libertarians would agree that work should be enough to raise one out of poverty. Nonetheless, we lack the political will to enact any kind of reform to realize that, because we worship "wealth creators" and the "invisible hand," and, for instance, raising the minimum wage is hence off the table. If we really truly valued work in more than a symbolic manner, this wouldn't be the case; the libertarian right would be providing concrete policy proposals that would actually address the problem in a way they consider non-coercive. Instead, we hear post-facto justifications for our inequality, or even arguments that it's a good thing. Hence, I stand by the idea that we don't "value," as in moral value, work, no matter what we claim our values are. |