From Elizabeth Girling
Newspaper headlines may stand in the way of rewarding people for acting in their own best interests (24 November 2007, p 46). But a more basic obstacle is the common perception of “fairness”. Given that Jim Giles dwells on how people value utility of things and concepts, neglect of this is a rather a serious omission – especially given that it’s the “common people”, with that common perception, who foot the bill for reward schemes.
Many people struggle with their weight, grew up poor or – yes, even in white-collar jobs – and are faced with a working future scarcely more motivating than being unemployed. Wherever the cut-off for intervention, you will have people who are next to or have pulled themselves out of the targeted state wondering why they bothered, given that a reward system could’ve had them doing less for more.
This is likely to be a particularly pernicious situation given that those handouts don’t come from thin air: they mean, for example, that the semi-skilled person who has put him/herself through training with the promise of a slight wage increase feels they are seeing much of that disappear to fund “encouragement” of someone disinclined to make the effort.
London, UK
