I don't think that most of you even know what "piece work" is. In this blog I will explain how significant it is.
First a little story. In the summer between my 2nd grade and 3rd grade, I had a job driving a truck while my father and an other man loaded sacks of potatoes onto the truck in the field. I did not drive the truck on public roads, only in the potato fields. I had to drive slow as one man would lift the sacks onto the truck and the other would stack them. I got paid on "piece work", that is, I was paid by the ton of potatoes that we hauled. I got paid 10 cents per ton. That was back in 1947. The more potatoes we hauled the more I got paid. Some times we would have as many as 9 tons on the load and for the day, we might haul as many as 5 loads. I opened a bank account at Bank of America and started saving everything I earned.
After that, each fall I picked cotton and was paid on "piece work". This time they paid 3-1/2 cents a pound for picking cotton. I pulled my sack up and down thru the rows of cotton and when it was full, I took it too the wagon where they had a scale. I would pick until I had about 50# of cotton in my bag because after that it was too hard to drag. Each time you had a "weigh up" they paid you right there on the spot. If you had 45# of cotton, they paid you $1.28 in cash, right on the spot. Because you got paid at each "weigh up", you had a clear connection between how much work you did and how much you got paid. Among the boys who picked cotton, we were very competitive and always compared how much we earned. I was one of the best at picking cotton and worked harder than almost anyone else. This is the way I was raised and to this day, I feel that it was one of the most fair systems that I have ever seen. I know that some kids picked less cotton and were paid less, but that was fair and no one complained.
Look at today where most of us are paid by the "hour". If we had picked cotton using that system it would have been clearly "not fair". Kids who picked much less than me would have been paid the same as me. If we had that kind of system, I can tell you that even though I was just a kid, I would not have worked as hard and neither would you. In order to "make it fair" we have let the government set minimum hourly rates for most work while we have almost eliminated any aspects of "piece work". Are you starting to see the problem?
In sports and particularly professional sports we still have some aspects of "piece work". The idea of football is to score as many points as you can while keeping the other team from scoring. For those players who are really good at doing the above, we pay them more. Would it be more fair if all the players got paid the same? I don't think so. Why would some players train and work so hard if they knew that they would end up being paid the same as those who did not make the effort? That would not be fair and we would all accept that.
If all the economy were based on "piece work" like sports, would that be more fair than how we are doing it now? As in sports, there would be a much wider range of individual earnings and thus some would clearly have more than others, but is that really unfair? If you were to look at cotton picking and you had a crew of 50 kids, which way would the 50 kids pick the most cotton? If they were paid on "piece work" or all paid the same? Look at it mathematically. Which way would end up with the highest "average" earnings? It is real easy. When every picker picks to their maximum, they end up picking the most. Do you think that someone who works on a communist farm in Russia picking cotton is going to work as hard as they can? They are going to do the minimum because they know that working harder is not going to end up allowing them to earn any more.
Look at some of the "contractors" in the new economy of today. Let's look at Uber. Rather than take the bus with its driver paid by the hour with tax payer's money, we have independent contractors who get paid more based on how many rides they drive. Notice that socialist and union people want to stamp out the whole Uber idea? They don't want "piece work"!
I am not sure exactly why this is, but the smaller the company the more it functions based on "piece work". Have you noticed that? Maybe it is because in a business, the only one who works on piece work is the boss. In smaller companies, the worker is often the boss. The bottom line is that we need to see if we can shift more of our economy to "piece work", it will clearly produce the largest pie. We all know that. There will also be a wider spread in earnings but the average will be higher too. We all need to start looking at making the pie bigger, other wise all we will do is to debate how to divide up a smaller pie more fairly where the average piece of pie is smaller.
PS--For the record, in 1949 when I was 9 years old, I picked 200# of cotton one Saturday and earned $7.00 which I put into my Bank of America savings account. Not bad for a 9 year old kid. Back then gasoline cost about $015 per gallon, so I could buy 46,7 gallons. Today that would cost about $105.00. Piece work was fair then and it is now too.
First a little story. In the summer between my 2nd grade and 3rd grade, I had a job driving a truck while my father and an other man loaded sacks of potatoes onto the truck in the field. I did not drive the truck on public roads, only in the potato fields. I had to drive slow as one man would lift the sacks onto the truck and the other would stack them. I got paid on "piece work", that is, I was paid by the ton of potatoes that we hauled. I got paid 10 cents per ton. That was back in 1947. The more potatoes we hauled the more I got paid. Some times we would have as many as 9 tons on the load and for the day, we might haul as many as 5 loads. I opened a bank account at Bank of America and started saving everything I earned.
After that, each fall I picked cotton and was paid on "piece work". This time they paid 3-1/2 cents a pound for picking cotton. I pulled my sack up and down thru the rows of cotton and when it was full, I took it too the wagon where they had a scale. I would pick until I had about 50# of cotton in my bag because after that it was too hard to drag. Each time you had a "weigh up" they paid you right there on the spot. If you had 45# of cotton, they paid you $1.28 in cash, right on the spot. Because you got paid at each "weigh up", you had a clear connection between how much work you did and how much you got paid. Among the boys who picked cotton, we were very competitive and always compared how much we earned. I was one of the best at picking cotton and worked harder than almost anyone else. This is the way I was raised and to this day, I feel that it was one of the most fair systems that I have ever seen. I know that some kids picked less cotton and were paid less, but that was fair and no one complained.
Look at today where most of us are paid by the "hour". If we had picked cotton using that system it would have been clearly "not fair". Kids who picked much less than me would have been paid the same as me. If we had that kind of system, I can tell you that even though I was just a kid, I would not have worked as hard and neither would you. In order to "make it fair" we have let the government set minimum hourly rates for most work while we have almost eliminated any aspects of "piece work". Are you starting to see the problem?
In sports and particularly professional sports we still have some aspects of "piece work". The idea of football is to score as many points as you can while keeping the other team from scoring. For those players who are really good at doing the above, we pay them more. Would it be more fair if all the players got paid the same? I don't think so. Why would some players train and work so hard if they knew that they would end up being paid the same as those who did not make the effort? That would not be fair and we would all accept that.
If all the economy were based on "piece work" like sports, would that be more fair than how we are doing it now? As in sports, there would be a much wider range of individual earnings and thus some would clearly have more than others, but is that really unfair? If you were to look at cotton picking and you had a crew of 50 kids, which way would the 50 kids pick the most cotton? If they were paid on "piece work" or all paid the same? Look at it mathematically. Which way would end up with the highest "average" earnings? It is real easy. When every picker picks to their maximum, they end up picking the most. Do you think that someone who works on a communist farm in Russia picking cotton is going to work as hard as they can? They are going to do the minimum because they know that working harder is not going to end up allowing them to earn any more.
Look at some of the "contractors" in the new economy of today. Let's look at Uber. Rather than take the bus with its driver paid by the hour with tax payer's money, we have independent contractors who get paid more based on how many rides they drive. Notice that socialist and union people want to stamp out the whole Uber idea? They don't want "piece work"!
I am not sure exactly why this is, but the smaller the company the more it functions based on "piece work". Have you noticed that? Maybe it is because in a business, the only one who works on piece work is the boss. In smaller companies, the worker is often the boss. The bottom line is that we need to see if we can shift more of our economy to "piece work", it will clearly produce the largest pie. We all know that. There will also be a wider spread in earnings but the average will be higher too. We all need to start looking at making the pie bigger, other wise all we will do is to debate how to divide up a smaller pie more fairly where the average piece of pie is smaller.
PS--For the record, in 1949 when I was 9 years old, I picked 200# of cotton one Saturday and earned $7.00 which I put into my Bank of America savings account. Not bad for a 9 year old kid. Back then gasoline cost about $015 per gallon, so I could buy 46,7 gallons. Today that would cost about $105.00. Piece work was fair then and it is now too.
