>> The theory that came to dominate, beginning in the second half of the
nineteenth century—and still does—was called “marginal productivity theory”;
those with higher productivities earned higher incomes that reflected their
greater contribution to society. Competitive markets, working through the laws
of supply and demand, determine the value of each individual’s contributions.
If someone has a scarce and valuable skill, the market will reward him amply,
because of his greater contribution to output. If he has no skills, his income
will be low.
"Productivity" here means the amount of income one generates, for their
employer or themselves. So in other words, if someone is good at making money,
they are productive and should be rewarded with more money.
For instance, people like me, who make their living sitting in front of a
computer screen all day are paid significantly higher salaries than people who
do back-breaking, physical work, like fruit pickers.
Picking fruit is really hard work and although you don't need a university
degree to be employed as one, it is not the kind of job that everyone can
easily do. Now that the UK is leaving the EU, fruit producers are starting to
have problems with employing people to pick their fruit, because local workers
will not do the job. "Will not" but also to a large extent "cannot" [1].
Agricultural work is not just a matter of good will- one needs to be able to
accomplish very physically demanding tasks. People who have spent most of
their working life as office workers do not have the experience, or the
stamina, to do agricultural work, even if they had the inclination. They might
be enticed to give it a try, if only the salaries for this type of job were
comparable to their usual fare. They're not- fruit pickers typically make
minimum wage.
And yet, agricultural work is an important part of the economy. Not to mention
that, without it, city-dwelling, office-working types like myself have nothing
to subsist on. We depend on the work of those low-paid workers who are poor in
formal skills but high in ability and determination, but we treat their job as
inferior, indeed less "productive" and therefore deserving of rewards than ours.
Inequality is certainly constructed, and ideas like "marginal productivity
theory" are at the root of this construction. Much like god-given ruling
rights of Western monarchies their use is to justify and legitimise absurd
social injustices, so that we can all cling on to the belief that the current
state of affairs is not so bad after all.
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[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/11/british-far...
Catalin Constandis, a Haygrove farm manager, said British workers did not want
to pick fruit because it was too physically demanding.
“In my team in the past two years, no English people have worked here. We had
some graduates once; they didn’t last a day,” said Constandis, who has just
become a British citizen.