Wages

The Bible counsels us that workmen are to receive their just wage.  It also warns that the wages of sin is death.  And soldiers are specifically counseled to be content with their wages.

Politicians are long on a "fair days wage", and things of that type.  Marxist claimed that working men were "wage slaves" and that each was to receive according to their abilities and needs.  Apparently their political class had more ability and needs, as they received more than others. . . funny how that worked.

Anyhow, wages are an interesting deal in a lot of ways, not the least of which is how people perceive their wages, or rather their income.

A real oddity, and one that I've become particularly conscious of, is that people generally spend to their income level, if they receive a middle class or upper income.  Not everyone, to be sure, but a lot of people, and seemingly most people.  Almost everyone in the middle class and even the lower wealthy class believes they struggle to get by. And some really do.  I admit that at my present middle class income, I really wonder how those making less get by.  Of course, I'm the only breadwinner as well, which means that if I split my income in half and pretended that it came from two people, we'd still be two middle class income earners, but not doing spectacularly well.

But even those people who make to upper middle incomes in a household will often expand out.  People acquire, I guess. I do as well.

By the same token, some will invariably spend more than they make, no matter what their income is.  I'm not sure why, but they will.

Making a "decent income" is a big deal with Americans.  Of course, it should be, but it's so much of a big deal, that it's often the only focus some people have.  "What's it pay?" is frequently the only career question that somebody asks before launching off on a life altering path.

Because a certain income becomes something a family, if not an individual person, becomes acclimated to, a wage can become like a shackle.  That's extremely common.  Even if the wage earner is prepared to abandon a certain income level, his family may not be, and that's effectively a jail cell.

These random comments amount to nothing more than a casual observation.  I'm not arguing for anything.  But I note it somewhat in the context of this line from a Man For All Seasons:

Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?