talloulou

I don't think the answer is a simple yes or no nor is it a constant. The further people get in life the less willing they are to move backwards. So it's all about negotiating and whether you'll negotiate to do this for that greatly depends on whether that moves you forward or backwards.

So if you can get paid said amount of $$$ for said amount of hard work and this is a step up for you it's likely you will accept that and be happy about it. However if the negotiated price is a step down for you then you won't be happy about it and might not accept it which is how you should be.

So conflict arises when you have groups where negotiations lead to steps up for some populations but great steps backwards for others. The people moving forward aren't harder workers than the other guy per se they are just situated on the ladder in a manner that they're moving up thus they're more content with doing more for less. The guy expected to move down, and he will have to move down the ladder to compete with the guys coming up, will be stressed and wondering how it is that someone stole his cheese. His best bet is to go find new cheese and keep moving up the ladder, never looking back but often there's lots of biatching involved.

It's human nature. If you clean toilets for $10 dollars a day and a population of folks move in who only got say $3 a day where they use to live these folks are gonna negotiate to happily clean toilets for $6 dollars a day. They are gonna win every competition with you provided they clean toilets as well as you do and they're gonna take your job. You'd be a fool to go from making $10 a day to $6 a day. Of course it's gonna make you mad. But you can't do anything about it so you might as well view it as bygones and broaden your horizons. I can no longer move up cleaning toilets so what am I going to do now?

This doesn't just apply to manual labor. My husband deals with this. He's had to constantly adjust and adapt because computer programmers in other countries are getting better and driving the cost of what he does down. He can't compete with them because they're moving up and he refuses to move backwards. So he has to come up with new ways to continue going in an upwards direction. Sitting around biatching about Indians in India doing programming on the cheap might make him feel better but it doesn't help his situation.

Do guys in India work harder than my husband? Not really. They just are happy and content with negotiations that he wouldn't be because they are moving up and their forward momentum forces him to have to adapt or risk being brought down.