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It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

nytimes.com

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Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#51

Post by Alupis »

deciplex wrote: post #47
Alupis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you give them money to pay rent and eat If every person gets X dollars per month, then over time, everything will cost at least X dollars. We have 78 years of a "grand experiment" to prove this (minimum wage). Proponents of BI often forget that our economy will not remain how it is today. Sure, if everyone today had an extra guaranteed $1,000 every month, it would short-term be fantastic. But the economy would…

> Sure, if everyone today had an extra guaranteed $1,000 every month, it would short-term be fantastic. But the economy would eventually adjust, as it always does. Rent would slide upwards, so would goods prices, etc, to the point where we wind up where we are today with minimum wage (perpetually raising it every few years in a never-ending game of cat and mouse, the essential cost of living). If implemented by idiot…

You make good points.

I don't necessarily oppose BI, but I am very skeptical of it actually working in practice for any nation. We'll have to wait and see how Finland's experiment works in the long term, but also we should recognize Finland is a small nation (5.3 million population, or about 45% of NYC's population) without a major economy like the US. The successes of one small nation don't necessarily translate into successes for large nations.

> It is very important that any implementation of basic income also do away with minimum wage at the same time.

I would argue, and you touched on, that we would have to do more than just drop minimum wage. We'd have to do away with all forms of social welfare safety nets.

There is a good argument that government would actually save money annually by shifting all forms of social welfare into a BI, due to reduced overhead of management, number of concurrent (and sometimes redundant) programs, folks who abuse/scam the system, etc. With a BI, that would be it, nobody gets any more or less, and you're free to spend it how you see fit.

> the only price inflation you should see

I'm not an economist, however I do believe some inflation is natural. This would mean, that over time, BI would have to be increased, just like our current-day minimum wage program. If we can somehow generate a self-sustaining feedback loop on a BI economy, maybe that works.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#52

Post by Overtonwindow »

This is because we have spent decades conditioning employers to view a college degree as the deciding factor of intelligence and capability. Which is completely and horribly backwards. Now that we have a lot of people with college degrees, employers are looking down on that and saying now you have to have a masters in order to be considered worthy of a job. It's all crap.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#53

Post by Alupis »

Retric wrote: post #48
Alupis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are tracking (and cherry picking) is the inflation rate, which naturally goes up and down over time. My point was, and remains, people are paid more today on a minimum, than they ever were intended to be when this program was created in 1938. Minimum wage was intended as a baseline for unskilled entry-level jobs. Our issue today is we have a tremendous amount of folks, more than ever imagined, attempting to…

Inflation rate is just that a rate, not adjusting for it after 7 years because fuck people with limited mental capacity is sick. As to trying things for 78 years we have very different problems now vs 78 years ago. To pretend otherwise is to simply act the fool. There are many popular ideas that simply don't work. Pretending everyone is a healthy, intelligent, well educated, and they can just make everything better b…

> because fuck people with limited mental capacity is sick.

Handing people more money for nothing does not solve their problems in the long term. If anything, 78 years of minimum wage has definitively proven this.

When inflation goes up, as it does, they'll all be right where they are today. Why solve today what you can solve tomorrow? Now, that's truly sick.

> we have very different problems now vs 78 years ago

We don't have different problems. Minimum wage was implemented to help prevent folks from working all day only to not be capable of affording life... this is exactly what we're debating today. So, 78 years later, we still haven't solved this issue...

> People have been working harder

Have they? Working harder today is a different notion than working harder in 1938. Today, we require education and highly skilled workers. Yet, we have a major shortage of exactly that. Why is this? Well, many reasons, but among them is our societal indifference to encouraging or mandating folks get high skilled training or a higher education. There's a big push today exactly against folks getting education and/or high skilled training, and you seem to be arguing this as well.

More money is a short term solution. It doesn't solve anything long term. It hasn't worked for 78 years, and it won't work for another 78 years. To use your words... "To pretend otherwise is to simply act the fool".

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#55

Post by [deleted] »

ghaff wrote: post #34
rs999gti wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there are plenty of jobs in the trades. From the BLS: http://www.explorethetrades.org/why-choose-the-trades/ Plenty of growth in HVAC, electrician, and plumbing fields. And even in a downturn these jobs are still needed and cannot be outsourced.

Anecdote: I've been trying to get a bathroom refurb done for about 6 months now and haven't been able to get a plumber. Certainly, there's a degree of boom or bust with the trades but in a growth area such as where I live, the market is tight.

[deleted]

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#56

Post by imron »

douche wrote: post #9
jayess wrote: post #2

The higher the minimum wage gets, the harder it'll be for those with little or no skills to get a job.

We're rapidly approaching the point where the utility of an untrained, low-skill worker is less than the cost of technology to replace them. Self-service checkout lines for retail are already an improvement - how long until fast-food restaurants simply turn around the POS systems at the counter, and you have Siri or Cortana taking your order at the drive-through? The floor for employability is getting higher, and I'm…

> Self-service checkout lines for retail are already an improvement

For some, but not for others. There are plenty of people who prefer manned checkout counters.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#57

Post by douche »

Alupis wrote: post #51
deciplex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, if everyone today had an extra guaranteed $1,000 every month, it would short-term be fantastic. But the economy would eventually adjust, as it always does. Rent would slide upwards, so would goods prices, etc, to the point where we wind up where we are today with minimum wage (perpetually raising it every few years in a never-ending game of cat and mouse, the essential cost of living). If implemented by idiot…

You make good points. I don't necessarily oppose BI, but I am very skeptical of it actually working in practice for any nation. We'll have to wait and see how Finland's experiment works in the long term, but also we should recognize Finland is a small nation (5.3 million population, or about 45% of NYC's population) without a major economy like the US. The successes of one small nation don't necessarily translate int…

The best thing I can see about a BI system that replaced the myriad of welfare programs we have now is that it (if implemented correctly) would remove a lot of the perverse incentives that keep people at the edge in dependent situations. Anecdata, but I've known people that turned down work or dropped out of the workforce because the extra income would be enough to put their households over the top of certain income "cliffs" that are built into some of the crappy welfare systems they took advantage of - a small bit of extra money wasn't worth crossing that Rubicon of whatever multiple of the poverty line, and losing their heating assistance, or free healthcare, and whatnot.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#58

Post by douche »

slackstation wrote: post #46
Alupis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should do away with it and replace it with basic income So instead of encouraging (or mandating?) young folks get trained or educated (or both!), we simply give them money for existing? I don't see how that solves the bigger issue. We, as a society, are very good at band-aid solutions (like minimum wage from the get-go). We're not good at solving the real hard problems. The real hard problem here is folks are ge…

The real meta problem is that if you don't work, you don't eat. Who cares if they have a job or they just sit at home and play videogames. Basic Income would allow people the freedom to pursue the things that truly interest them. It will be a golden era of video games and movies and art. A huge percentage of the population will be only concerned with pleasure. Overall, we produce more with less labor and robotic auto…

> Overall, we produce more with less labor and robotic automation only accelerates that.

I recently visited a reconstruction medieval village museum on the outskirts of Berlin. It's almost unimaginable how labor-intensive simple subsistence was for our ancestors. Try running a scratch-plow behind a team of oxen, reaping wheat with a sickle, grinding flour with a quern, spinning wool into yarn by hand with a spindle, weaving that yarn into cloth on a hand-loom, chopping hazel whips with a hatchet, splitting them into withs, and weaving a basket.

Now I can walk into Walmart, and grab a loaf of bread, a five-pack of t-shirts, and a Rubbermaid storage tub for less than an hour's worth of labor.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#59

Post by Retric »

Alupis wrote: post #53
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation rate is just that a rate, not adjusting for it after 7 years because fuck people with limited mental capacity is sick. As to trying things for 78 years we have very different problems now vs 78 years ago. To pretend otherwise is to simply act the fool. There are many popular ideas that simply don't work. Pretending everyone is a healthy, intelligent, well educated, and they can just make everything better b…

> because fuck people with limited mental capacity is sick. Handing people more money for nothing does not solve their problems in the long term. If anything, 78 years of minimum wage has definitively proven this. When inflation goes up, as it does, they'll all be right where they are today. Why solve today what you can solve tomorrow? Now, that's truly sick. > we have very different problems now vs 78 years ago We d…

Your confusing politicians letting inflation kill minimum wage with having minimum wage fail.

Second you completely ignored millions of people who can't be significantly educated or handle significant responsibility, but can hold down low skill repetitive jobs.

Put down your blinders and try looking at the real world.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#60

Post by Alupis »

Retric wrote: post #59
Alupis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because fuck people with limited mental capacity is sick. Handing people more money for nothing does not solve their problems in the long term. If anything, 78 years of minimum wage has definitively proven this. When inflation goes up, as it does, they'll all be right where they are today. Why solve today what you can solve tomorrow? Now, that's truly sick. > we have very different problems now vs 78 years ago We d…

Your confusing politicians letting inflation kill minimum wage with having minimum wage fail. Second you completely ignored millions of people who can't be significantly educated or handle significant responsibility, but can hold down low skill repetitive jobs. Put down your blinders and try looking at the real world.

> Second you completely ignored millions of people who can't be significantly educated or handle significant responsibility, but can hold down low skill repetitive jobs

You seem to, at the core of your argument, have little faith in people's capabilities.

> Put down your blinders and try looking at the real world

I've done just that. We have an evolving economy, and we need to put things in place to enable a successful transition. Handing people money for nothing is not part of a successful transition; it only postpones the proper solution. That's wrong.

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