Salary and productivity

We would like to have the same wages in Mexico as in the United States, but we forget that wages are directly related to productivity. It's true that small, medium, and large businesses can penalize their profits, but not so much that it discourages effort and investment.

We also know that wages and spending are always playing fair games. If more wages must be paid, more must be earned for what is produced, a perfect formula for crushing increases and fueling inflation.

We would like to have legislators respected for their ability and honesty; however, in the minds of many citizens, legislators could be seen as a group of people who have never worked or produced anything in their lives. It is outrageous that, if this is the case, these friends dedicate themselves to telling employers what they should pay and what they should charge, without disregarding the powers that the laws have in this regard.

It is of particular importance and a matter of the utmost justice that teachers and police officers receive generous salaries, as the work they do is of enormous significance in the former case, and of great risk in the latter. However, the sound principle that salaries are awarded based on the results of those who earn them should prevail in Mexico. If this rule were implemented, I don't know how many thousands of teachers and police officers would not only be fired but even prosecuted. I also know that quite a few teachers and police officers would become millionaires, as the results of their work would attest to this.

Support for the elderly or those in certain situations of need places Mexico among the most supportive and committed countries for vulnerable social groups, but this support could not grow indefinitely as if we were a world power with high and competitive productivity. Turning this support into a permanent way of currying favor with the people would ruin everyone's lives, because if the state's income is depleted by social support and payments to the growing and expensive bureaucracy, as is already happening, other important areas of national spending will be left unprotected, or they will be addressed by further indebting the country. Let us also remember that smart public spending is that which is invested in making us more productive, not more cared for.

There's also a paradox: the two OECD countries with the highest number of hours worked per week, Mexico and Colombia, are also the two countries with the lowest productivity per hour worked. An hour spent making chips is undoubtedly more productive than making clay pots, but a week spent making pots is more productive than killing time in a bureaucratic office or glued to a cell phone in a retail store.

Raising the minimum wage to 10,000 pesos per month and reducing the workweek to 40 hours shouldn't be political issues, but rather the result of a profound economic and labor reengineering that guarantees a salary based on results and better hours based on productivity. If a person can do their job quickly and productively, why impose longer hours? And if another person isn't capable of doing what they should do in their current hours, how can they be reduced even further?