(Steering without taxes; 05-02; p.5)
Talking about the employers group, it is useful
to differentiate between big companies based on capital like share-holder
companies and the mentioned individually owned firms.
The first ones should recognise the dangers of destroying one's
very fundamentals of economic acting by manipulating shares' prices
for short-term reasons. This destruction becomes visible e.g.
in the loss of share-holders' confidence or in the belated realisation
that when capital does not render profits anymore and one has
to generate products or services again, one needs employees for
that. Not really necessary for long-term strategies are "visions"
or some other illusions but clear images of the goals to attain.
Personal owners of enterprises obviously don't have any influence
on the markets and they know best themselves, how to act profitable.
Do they? - Perhaps there is a potential field of activity for
associations or government bodies. The chambers e.g. could foster
their information services about laws and governments could urge
customers - including themselves - to pay bills in due time.
Employees do not have any but a passive role
in solving the problems either: most of them are not free to spend
their income voluntarily. But the "haves" among them
should know that biting for more may eventually lead to loosing
the ostensibly defended status. For the German social state is
obliged to transfer income to "have-nots"; if "haves"
do insist on their status, they simply will be made redundant
to a greater extent and the ones left have to finance even more
"have-nots".
Within the German framework of autonomous negotiations about wages
and salaries between employers' associations and trade-unions,
questions of distribution may therefore become relevant again:
perhaps not only between the two parties but between the wage-earners.
(End of article)