Critical Thinking
Different professions and job or organizations pay different amounts of money depending on what is stipulated in the contract signed. However, there have been arguments about what would happen if all the professions would pay the same amount regardless of the type of work done. This paper will discuss the problems or the effects of paying every worker equal salary irrespective of their job description or position.
If there is equal pay for each employee, people will tend to shy away from the complex professions such as medicine or engineering. This would mean that the society would have less medical practitioners because better remuneration is what pushes people to pursue some of these professions. Hence, there will be inadequate or no medical care staffs. Consequently, the economy would be compromised because the contributors to the economy might not be productive if they do not receive better healthcare. There are courses that require complex sciences such as mathematics or physics. Thus, paying those individuals the same amount as those who dropped out of high school would be demeaning.
Consequently, paying workers equal amount would slow the economic growth because there would be no competition. People will just work with less motivation knowing that the payment will be equal regardless of the amount of the work done. Secondly, people would avoid the work that is so demanding since there is no monetary reward despite the work done. The economic activities would just be unattractive because there would be little or no creativity in the organizations. For that reason, it is not advisable to have equal pay for everyone without considering their type of work, their profession, and demands of their career.
Having a system where each person receives equal pay despite what they do or what their job requires, would make it difficult to recruit people to certain jobs. People would prefer to remain in their current jobs or profession since there is no value addition to moving to a new job or a demanding career. Most people would not attempt to join the career that is more engaging. In fact, people would avoid challenging occupations and prefer to join simple jobs that do not demand a lot. This would slow down the economic growth as well as social integration because some professions would be left vacant if there are no better remunerations because payment is one of the motivating factors when choosing the career.
Then, it would not fair to pay workers equally because it would jeopardize the economy growth. Consequently, the move would kill the people’s passion, thereby reducing their creativity.
When people receive the same amount of pay, then the social stratification system would be altered because all the people would be regarded as equal by the virtue of receiving the same amount of money. Stratification on sociological perspective is simply the ranking of individuals in a society in a way that exhibits social differences. In fact, social stratification involves both the material and non-materials qualities.
Indeed, in an economy where people are earning equal pay, it only indicates that almost everyone will be at the same level economically. Consequently, there will be no competition and the economic growth would be compromised. This would simply indicate that people would have no role models to look up to because the ranking would be the same. Therefore, the society will lose the aspect of social stratification, although for a moment.
In response to the issues raised by the discussion, most of them are negative and the move to pay workers equally would have negative effects both on the social life and to the economy. Hence, undertaking such a step would bring more harm to a country’s economy. In addition, the move would also demean the people who work hard to earn more.
In conclusion, there is a reason why some careers pay more. In fact, such reasons may include the aspect of more schooling and personal effort. Therefore, people with more skills qualify to earn more than their counterparts who are semi-skilled. Besides, everyone would choose to have minimal skills since it does not benefit them to be highly skilled. Not everyone has the chance to become a highly skilled worker, a situation that would encourage the stratification. Rather than paying each person equally, the society should provide equal prospects for those who are lower in the stratification system to advance to the next level.
If everyone earns the same amount, this will harm the economy because the demand for goods and services would increase. As a result, the situation would attract inflation and the proliferation of black markets. In essence, if everyone can afford all the luxury goods and services, the market forces would make the prices of these goods to increase astronomically, making it impossible for people to afford them. The increase of these prices would depreciate the currency, a situation that would affect the balance of trade; hence, making it difficult for a given country to do business with other nations.
