Few working at Staples make a living wage.

[haele]

116. Employment income is "three legged" - Entrepreneurship, Private Sector, Public Sector -

(Sorry, I've just gone back to University to get a BS in Business, and I've been doing a lot of research working on what I'll need for my Capstone presentation...)

When someone emerges from childhood dependency and does not have Capital already in place from a trust fund, bequest, supplement, or inheritance to get them going, they need to start out with income wages.

There are three ways to earn income wages - Entrepreneurship, Private sector Jobs, and Public Sector Jobs.
Entrepreneurship is a "venture" - it requires someone starting out to have a business plan and attract Capital to invest in their business. Their income is in revenue from that business after costs. This is the most tenuous and risky form of income wage, as if you don't have a good customer base, or if your costs are too high, or your product or service is sub-par, you'll have problems making income.
Unless of course, your business is a scam and requires cheating your investors or your customer to make money, in which case, your business model is really little better than the schemes of a thief or confidence man (or woman), and you pretty much deserve whatever the law or public mobs throw at you.
Very few Entrepreneurial ventures actually sustain themselves much past a few years, as such a model requires a stable foundation of secure local infrastructure, loyal and increasing customer base, and a stable, conservative (little "c" conservative - not cultural or neo-liberal Conservative) Capital environment to cover the inevitable periods where there is not a stable income flow or there are emergencies. The hard work and stress it takes to run your "own" business is very draining, and over 90% these businesses either fail or the ownership gets sold to interested investors who provide the original owner with compensation of some sort for the rights to run that business. The owner may still think he or she still owns the business, but in reality, they have lost control and slipped into the next category -the Private Sector wage earner.

Private Sector Jobs is when you seek employment in an independent, supervised or lesser management position - from either a privately managed company/corporation or from the above-described entrepreneur. Your income is dependent on two factors - the good-will, ethics and business model of the employer, and the labor environment of your community. If your community is Labor-friendly, your job security, wages and benefits will tend to be higher as the community recognizes that Labor is the most secure means to sustain both the community and Capital. If your community is Capital-friendly, your job security and wages reflect whatever the business philosophy of major Capital providers of the area is.
Private Sector Jobs tend to be dictated by Capital opportunities. The jobs that are available are only those jobs required to serve Capital - in other words, to produce enough to show a profit and meet the requirements for the employer to maintain Capital opportunities.
The ability to advance within these jobs is equally limited to that which is required to serve Capital, so even though a Private Sector company may need to employ 5000 persons in a community, there are only a select few of those positions that are "growth" positions, where an employee starting out at the bottom can rise between economic classes on that job alone.
Finally, studies in labor show that the larger the employer organization, the less the ratio for growth within the workforce exists within that organization. A company with 5000 employees will see less opportunity (openings) for employee advancement and greater positional stagnation within the workforce than a company with 15 employees will.
And finally, if there are no Capital opportunities in your community, there will be fewer Private Sector jobs.

Public Sector Jobs are pretty much jobs that are recognized as necessary to sustain a common community. They are primarily service jobs at local, regional, national and international levels, and as there is no requirement to serve Capital by showing a profit, there tends to be a lot of flexibility in terms of both upward and lateral movement within the public sector positions.
While wages and benefits within the Public Sector jobs tend to be lower at the upper levels than their private sector equivalents, Public Sector jobs tend to have a little better wages and benefits at the lower levels.
Public Sector Jobs are dependent on public revenues - grants from larger Non-profit or government organizational levels, local and regional taxes and local and regional fees. Oddly enough, a public sector job tends to pay for itself, as the Public Sector is able to negotiate more favorable benefit services simply through the function of having a larger pool of employees - which lowers the cost of labor, and the employee pays income taxes on his or her wages.
While these Public Sector Jobs seem to be a plumb job in terms of job security and growth, the employee often finds that the further "up the ladder" he or she goes, the less compensation they earn for their work is compared to the equivalent Private Sector position.
While there is a lot of opportunity to become wealthy in Private Sector jobs and through Entrepreneurship (as well as great poverty if something doesn't work out), the majority of the Public Sector employees cannot become "wealthy" simply working that job for their entire working careers. The few who do usually have used their Public employment to leverage a position of some sort in one of the other two sectors of income, and despite the stereotype, this is not the norm.

If there is a decrease in Private sector jobs, or in Capital-based employment opportunities due to, say, an economic panic in Capital, Public Sector jobs become the main place of employment for what is commonly considered "the Middle Class"


As Keynes showed us, no matter what fiscal policy a Nation claims to follow, if the Private Sector is unwilling to spend money, the ability for that nation to set it's own fiscal policy means that the Public Sector becomes the employer of last resort to get people employed, grease the wheels of a stalled economy, and pull a nation out of an economic death-spiral.
That's why Greece is having such a bad problem with their deficit - which is still not as bad as the deficit we had going into the Great Depression, and where the ballooning of Public Sector jobs stabilized and turned around the death spiral we were sliding into.
Greece is tied to the EU/Euro like New Jersey is a US state tied to the Dollar. Austerity doesn't work in those cases.
Heck, Austerity policies have never been shown to turn around a recession - but they have been shown historically to create revolutions and transfer Capital to those who position themselves to take power.

Haele