Quote of the Day: On so-called “wage slavery”

 

“To call low pay ‘wage slavery’ is to insult both employers and slaves. As economist George Reisman notes:

‘The difference between freedom and slavery is as sharp as day and night, even when a worker must work to avoid the pain of hunger. For even in this case it is not the capitalist employer who causes the worker’s hunger. On the contrary, he provides the means of satisfying the worker’s hunger. The worker works for the capitalist always in order to receive a positive— his wages. The difference between a free worker and slave can always be seen in this: A slave is someone who is kept at his work against his will: by chains, whips, and guns— i.e., by physical force applied by other people. In the absence of such things, he would run off. A free worker, on the other hand, is someone who works of his own choice and who, more likely, can be kept from his work only by means of physical force.’”

~ quoted from George Reisman’s Capitalism, in the new book by Don Watkins & Yaron Brook: Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality