havin’funfarming - 9/22/2023 13:07

In todays world benefits have slowly become almost if not as important as the wage. In my opinion I don’t think that is a good thing. I wonder if we would have been better off keeping it simple. As in you get paid when you work, nothing more. No benefits, no paid vacations, maybe not even overtime. It would have kept people being personally responsible for their own position in life. People can still choose to use their wages to buy those benefits, nothing would really change for those that choose to use their money for that lifestyle.

These benefits packages try to fit everyone into a cookie cutter package and, at least I believe, kind of dumbs down the population by reducing their personal responsibility. A lot of these benefits are a use it or lose it type of benefit so people tend to use services and benefits that they wouldn’t bother with otherwise. These benefit packages are a direct cost to the business and consequently lead to reduced wages.

To clarify what I am talking about isn’t about simply cutting out benefits from where we are currently. What I mean is hypothetically cutting out all benefits such as paid holidays and keeping the actual cost of an employee the same by increasing their wages by a corresponding amount. The businesses profit margins would not change.

I guess the basic premise is that I wonder if this is a slippery slope where we are slowly becoming a society where we will eventually lose all the skills needed to actually navigate ourselves through life’s choices and will lead to eventually working for predetermined privileges rather than money that we can use to get there by our own choices and wisdom.

I’m not sure if I explained it well but hopefully it is clear enough to get the idea across. What are your thoughts? What have we gained/lost by going to what has basically become a combined payment system of wages/benefits packages?