Welcome, Guest: Register On Nairaland / LOGIN! / Trending / Recent / NewStats: 3,195,499 members, 7,958,508 topics. Date: Wednesday, 25 September 2024 at 04:05 PM |
Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Career / NIGERIAN CAPITALISM Necessitates Poverty (680 Views)
What Is The Real Meaning Of Poverty? / The Six Weapon Of Overcoming Poverty In Nigeria / Nigeria Has No Business With Poverty (2) (3) (4)
(1) (Reply)
NIGERIAN CAPITALISM Necessitates Poverty by kambo(m): 2:20am On Jan 29, 2013 |
Abuja: sometimes after work hours when passing by certain junctions i see a flood of people. They're waitng for transportation to take them home. home to where? interesting question. to the slums. needless to say - these sets of people who make up the main labour force of the city and keep the bulk of the cities industrial machinery functioning live in the hinther parts of this artificial metropolis. Question then is - who lives in the decent parts! typically the rich! or near rich. infact, because of the high cost of accomodation in the city, any thing that looks decent, i dont mean opulent, just decent (read: not too filthy environent, no paints peeling off the wall stuff. blase structures ) is rented at exorbitant rates. With the cost of accomodation out of the sight of the poor man's binoculars they've have to go to where it can be affordable. There's an exception though, those who live in government monitized buildings. Now, these sets of people, are the necessary accessories of any capitalist system. no doubt. labour is needed in the conversion process - of resources to products to revenue. But why nigerian capitalism to blame for the poverty? first, these sets of workers give their life for the enterprise they serve. what do i mean, they wake at 5am, or 4am to prepare to beat the pereniall traffic jam, the work away at their place of employment spending all their prime time, then - this is how the poverty trap is created: they receive PITTANCE WAGES - taking home pittance wages - they're faced with HIGH AND ESCALATING COSTS OF LIVING- oops. SOME BILLS can be avoided , dodged, substituted, postponed but others cant. welcome the set of needs called NECESSITIES. here in the capital city the costs of necessities keeps climbing higher and higher a trap and vicious cycle results. To pay for life's cost they need money. to get money they go to work, The work pays them pittance with little increment, there is barely anything left after living costs has taken its toll. All workers prime time is used up to service the employer so time for job hunting is nil, time for self improvement is also nil, time flies by. Rich gets richer cuz they can set prices for the products they sell. A hotelier can review room rates, and so on. worker incurs more needs like having children, more school fees etc. With these trends in place - poverty is inevitable. in short - most so called rich people who run local or regional businesses are doing nothing but hiring slave labour. And sorry, after a particular age job mobility is impossble so the so called worker become tied to the employer l ike a willing slave . the pittance pay becomes life support capsules. Capitalist on the other hand are under pressure and greedy influences to pay as little as possible . why, because worker remunerations constitutes a cost. the less the better, besides he/she still wants to retain her position on some spying index. that index could be forbes or fortune-that's what the capitalist mainly lives for. Exceptions - there really no exceptions - except those who'll receive bashings if they underpay. or those trying to have a more than regional presence. Think banks. and what proportion of the nations labour pool do the better paying establishments absorb? I guess more like 0.0001%. i mean less than 1%. what percentage does Government employ? maybe 20% of the labour pool and government is a terribly poor payer. As a matter of fact,the cycle of poverty is such that, it dooms a particular set of people perenially to remain poor - because of the haunting needs/ pittance income dilemma. Say a worker wants to take the ican exam and needs N1m naira for training. he earns N100k/month working as a security gaurd in a hotel. in 2 years he can bag his educational trophies and move on. easy. he'll ditch his employer. but say he earns N30k - which is what the most of these places pay even less - that educational dream is gone! in fact he wont even have such aspirations with such poor pay. if cant find better paying job - he's doomed to a cycle of poverty. like i said they're exceptions but within context the exceptions better payers are ultra nitpickers with exhorbitant requirements. The cropping needs: children education - education of any decent quality runs into millions of naira those of mediocre value easily swallow typical take home income. note also - the rich own the factors of living!! so while paying the masses with one hand,they collect double with the other hand. perpetuating the poverty cycle. example: that school that charges N500k for tuition /yr may pay the security man (N30k ) >> housing: if one doesnt want the child to live in a slum he'll need to shell out( some 6 - 7 figure amounts) the list goes on. Now,in the nigerian context, this is really obtuse - infact the owners of the factors of living charge such unconscionable prices for their goods - while paying such poor salaries that the ration of take home pay to living cost (i mean barely decent living cost) is highly negative. e.g say the N30k security gaurd salary = 360K take home a year, is placed against barely decent cost of living of say N3M year. which means the security gaurd will need to work for 10 years at the current rate to enjoy some things. how many 10 year bundles does a typical young worker have? very few,like 2,3,4. on the other hand - the cost of living versus salary in western nations isnt so high. another way to look at it. most of the regular cars sold here in nigeria go for $10K+ to $50K in the u.s in that country, a security man like i mentioned can earn $15 - 25k /year. so in a year or two his total take home is equal to a new car! to earn such equivalent salary in nigeria, the average security man would need to earn a 6 digit figure! not likely ever. no nigerian capitalist will allow it even if he the capitalist earns trillions of dollars a year. with the situations so in western nations, a security man there can enjoy the basic decent necessities of life without needing to bag a degree! so many of them dont send school!? but over here to escape the poverty trap people need to earn more (going via the job route) and more pay is usually only awarded to the elites in the educational labour force. The situation wont change except a serious crack down is made against slave labour and pittance wages dished out by the rich and their slave yard factories. |
(1) (Reply)
Instrumention Control And Automation Design Training / A Concern Graduate / Certifications
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 27 |