Open AccessJust Wages in Which Markets?
Author(s) -
Lisa Herzog
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
erasmus journal for philosophy and economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1876-9098
DOI - 10.23941/ejpe.v11i2.331
Subject(s) - embeddedness , argument (complex analysis) , wage , economics , efficiency wage , economic justice , power (physics) , market power , positive economics , microeconomics , labour economics , law and economics , sociology , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics , anthropology , monopoly
Joseph Heath argues that we should reject the idea of a ‘just wage’ because market prices are supposed to signal scarcities and thereby to promote overall efficiency, rather than reward contributions. This argument overlooks the degree to which markets are institutionally, socially, and culturally embedded. Their outcomes are hardly ever ‘pure’ market outcomes, but the result of complex interactions of economic and other factors, including various forms of power. Instead of rejecting moral intuitions about wage justice as misguided, we can often understand them as pointing towards questions about the embeddedness of markets, or lack thereof. At least in some cases, changes in the framework of markets can both increase efficiency (or at least not reduce it) and get us closer to conventional notions of fair wages, e.g. when gender discrimination is reduced. Thus, while an abstract notion of a ‘just wage’ remains problematic, we can and should recognize that some wages are unjust.