Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[OngBonga]

Ok, my first thought was that these people are being given tasks which require skill or intelligence. But he gets to that, so cool.

The gist I'm getting is that performance related pay would work in the factory where the job in hand is to operate machinery, or other mundane tasks like picking & packing, basically a great deal of industrial production. According to this research, it starts to fall apart where the job in question is cognitive... where it requires innovation and creativity. I guess smart people perform worse when under financial pressure, and where there's a huge carrot, it distracts them from peak performance. It's an interesting conclusion.

I think the points I am making relating to industry are supported by this research. Mechanical tasks improve in quality with pay.

[CoccoBill]

^I'd assume some of that is explained by the difference in wages, more people falling under the barely surviving category. Factory workers doing monotonous tasks probably earn a great deal less on average than people doing innovative and creative work. The other alternative which I'm a bit hesitant to pursue is saying factory workers are simpler folks who don't care about their work having a purpose, or at least have slightly less ambitious goals regarding that.

[OngBonga]

I think the lack of purpose thing is important in factory workers. This is why they lack incentive.

The pay... I'm not sure that really matters. I mean wealth is relative. Someone earning £1000 a week, being offered a £5k performance bonus, might be more motivated to earn that reward than someone who is earning £10k a week and offered a £20k bonus. It's five weeks wages to the former, and two to the latter. People's idea of "a lot of money" differs drastically depending largely on income.

[wufwugy]

I think the points I am making relating to industry are supported by this research. Mechanical tasks improve in quality with pay.

If I'm making guesses, I would guess that the causality is backwards. Pay is determined by productivity. Somebody getting a raise to do the same job is unlikely to become that much more productive, if any more, but somebody more productive than the equilibrium wage for his job is very likely to get a raise. And if he didn't get a raise, it would mean that his bosses are bad at business. He could very easily get a job at a different firm making more too.