“Faced with low productivity despite improved equipment, and with drift from the pits despite both higher wages and better amenities… a point seems to have been reached where the [coal] industry is in a mood to question a method it has taken for granted.”

— Eric Trist

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 5

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Eric Trist 29

British scientist 1909–1993

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Source: "Overcoming resistance to change." 1948, p. 512; Lead paragraph

“In America, despite the amazing rise in productivity we’ve had in the last 30 years, real wages have actually gone down. All of the increase in productivity has been taken by the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, called the FIRE sector, almost all of it by the financial sector. … So instead of having industrial capitalism a century ago, we have a finance capitalism that actually is stifling industrial capitalism here. So what Alan Greenspan and others call the postindustrial economy is really neo-feudalism. It’s a financialized economy where all of the surplus goes to the banks.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Deficit Hawks One Two Punch http://michael-hudson.com/2010/12/deficit-hawks-one-two-punch/ (December 16, 2010)
Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

“Coal being then the chief source of power, much industrial reconstruction depended on there being a plentiful and cheap supply. But the newly nationalized industry was not doing well. Productivity failed to increase in step with increases in mechanization. Men were leaving the mines in large numbers for more attractive opportunities in the factories. Among those who remained, absenteeism averaged 20 percent. Labor disputes were frequent despite improved conditions of employment. Some time earlier the National Coal Board had asked the Institute to make a comparative study of a high producing, high morale mine and a low producing, low morale, but otherwise equivalent mine.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 7

“The promotion of dairy products in schools is especially troubling, where children are a captive audience and greatly influenced by the foods served there. That’s why the dairy industry wants to maintain its strong presence in schools, despite local and federal efforts to improve the nutritional quality of school food.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Whitewashed (2014)

“The fact that a woman you love reaches a point in the relationship where she ceases to love you, and despite that you can never bring yourself to scorn or despise her, is very rare indeed.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“Owing to the incapacity of the higher price-rate to appeal to the "acquisitive sense," it would appear altogether plausible to attempt to do so by utilizing the opposite strategy: by decreasing piece-rates, to force workers to produce more in order to maintain their accustomed earnings. Moreover, two simple observations seem to have held true in the past, as they do today: a lower wage and higher profit are directly related, and all that is paid out in higher wages must imply a corresponding reduction of profits.
Capitalism has been guided by this axiom repeatedly, and even from its beginning, and it has been an article of faith for centuries that lower wages are "productive."”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In other words, lower wages were believed to enhance worker productivity.
Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

“Canada is a high-wage area. The U. S. is a high-wage area. Latin America is a low-wage area. Migratory pressure flows from low-wage to high-wage regions; from the Third World to the First World (until migratory equilibrium is reached when First World becomes Third World).”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump’s Good for the English Language," http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/trumps-good-for-the-english-language/ WorldNetDaily.com, September 17, 2015.
2010s, 2015

“Since 1997, I think the human rights situation in Hong Kong has been regressing slowly. It could be that in China, the situation has been improving slowly, and when both sides eventually meet, they can move forward together. My hope is that the regression in Hong Kong will be a little slower, and the improvement in China a little faster, so that both sides meet at a higher point.”

Szeto Wah (1931–2011) Hong Kong politician and teacher

Before Handover of Hong Kong (1997), Quote of the Day: Szeto Wah on democracy in Hong Kong and China https://shanghaiist.com/2011/01/03/szeto-wah/

“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter I, p. 7

“When you improve the people's economic well-being, it will lead to higher wage increases and higher purchasing power, which will lead to better economic growth. This is a self-fulfilling and virtuous cycle.”

Lim Guan Eng (1960) Finance Minister of Malaysia

Lim Guan Eng (2018) cited in " Govt not just in cost-cutting mode, says Lim https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/10/10/govt-not-just-in-costcutting-mode-says-lim/" on The Star Online, 10 October 2018

“Faced with low productivity despite improved equipment, and with drift from the pits despite both higher wages and better amenities… a point seems to have been reached where the [coal] industry is in a mood to question a method it has taken for granted.”

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