Portal:Capitalism/Selected quote/50

“ For good or evil, American labor has declared itself in as a silent partner in every business. With the acquiescence of the public and the government, workers ask for, and usually succeed in getting, some fraction of corporation profits. (The moral for the self-interested laborer is to apprentice himself to a profitable quasi-monopolistic industry which has plenty of gravy to share.)

Modern capitalist society seems so imbued with a feeling of guilt over the existing inequality of income that almost everyone believes in the desirability not only of higher wages, but of much higher wages. Consequently, the demands of workers are literally insatiable. An employer cannot buy them off at any price. All he can buy is a little time; but in a few months, the workers will be back for more.

The above remarks are stated as facts, without any expression of approval or viewing with alarm. It should be said, however, that there is nothing sacred about the traditional fraction of two-thirds of the national income going to wages and salaries. Moreover, with production growing over time, real wages can continue to rise without at all impairing the returns to property. But a reckless labor movement that forces up money wages too rapidly can certainly bring economic ruin upon itself and the economic system as a whole.

” — Paul Samuelson (1915 – 2009)
Economics: The Original 1948 Edition